Empowering music investors: the Tangy Market

About

Tangy Market is revolutionizing the music industry by enabling private investments in music royalties. The platform allows users to buy, sell, and trade shares of songs, albums, and music catalogs. This unique marketplace supports fractionalized investments, allowing people to invest in music while supporting artists directly. Each investment acts as an advance payment to artists, transforming music royalties into tradable assets.

When Tangy Market first approached UKAD in February 2022, they needed significant improvements and enhancements to their app. UKAD's role was initially limited to front-end development using React Native, while the client handled the back-end. Over time, UKAD took over both front-end and back-end development and UI/UX redesigns to enhance user experience. Tangy Market required a cost-effective, cross-platform solution, and React Native was chosen for its efficiency in developing iOS, Android, and web applications from a single codebase.

Challenges

During our collaboration with Tangy Market, UKAD encountered exhilarating challenges:

1. UX overhaul: A complete user interface and experience overhaul required an in-depth UX audit, competitive research, and benchmarking to identify and resolve usability issues. 

2. Data visualization: Incorporating historical data visualization into the app was essential. This feature allows users to examine trends and make well-informed investment choices. 

3. Spotify integration: Integrating with Spotify was quite challenging as it required ensuring a smooth user experience and access to enhanced data.

4. Feature enhancements: Implementing new features, like a designed news feed, intercom integration for customer support, tax report data export, cache optimization, and a new start page, contributed to the project's complexity. 

5. Security and compliance: Enhancing the backend with an anti-fraud system and a KYC (Know Your Customer) process was essential to ensure security and compliance. 

6. Visual appeal: Lastly, it was imperative to make the app visually appealing and user-friendly through better visual hierarchy, consistent iconography, and improved navigation.

Solutions

UKAD tackled these challenges with tailored solutions, including detailed app redesigns, backend enhancements, and advanced feature integrations:

1. App redesign: UKAD conducted a thorough UX audit and competitive research to address the app redesign. This process involved identifying and fixing usability issues, improving the app's visual hierarchy, and implementing a light theme for a cleaner look. Consistent iconography and redesigned vital screens, such as the portfolio, asset details, marketplace, buy/sell popovers, splash, onboarding, and graphs, significantly enhanced the user experience.

2. React Native development: For the technology stack, React Native was chosen due to its ability to create high-performance cross-platform mobile apps efficiently for both iOS and Android from a single codebase, speeding up development and ensuring consistency across platforms.

3. AWS integration:

   • Amplify: Utilized to integrate AWS services like authentication, APIs, and storage, simplifying the development of robust cloud-powered applications. AWS Amplify is a set of tools and services that enable developers to build scalable and secure cloud-powered applications. 

   • AWS SDK: Enabled seamless access and management of AWS services such as S3, EC2, and DynamoDB.

   • AWS Lambda: On the backend, AWS Lambda executes code without managing servers, enabling scalable, event-driven applications. This service allows us to quickly build scalable applications, reducing operational overhead and enhancing efficiency.

   • Other AWS services: AWS RDS provided a reliable and accessible relational database service, while AWS SNS facilitated efficient notification and messaging to subscribers. AWS SQS ensured reliable and scalable message queuing, improving the fault tolerance and performance of the system. AWS Cognito was added for secure user authentication and access control, and AWS S3 offered secure and scalable storage for a wide range of data.

4. Third-Party integrations:

   • AppsFlyer and Google Analytics: We started using AppsFlyer to gain in-depth insights into our marketing campaigns, such as unique and non-unique downloads and users. This data-driven approach helped us improve user acquisition and retention. However, we later switched to Google Analytics for better tracking capabilities.

   • Mangopay: Integrated to handle complex payment flows securely, offering features like e-wallets and escrow accounts, which were essential for Tangy Market’s transactional needs. 

   • Firebase: We use Firebase primarily for its powerful analytics and reliable notification services. Its analytics capabilities enable us to track user behavior and app performance, while its notification service allows us to engage users with targeted messaging and alerts. This system ensures interdependent and interconnected service operations.

   • Intercom: Intercom was integrated into the app for real-time customer support and personalized messaging. This allowed users to access live chat support, engage with customer service representatives, and receive timely notifications. Intercom’s capabilities extended to setting up email communication and sending newsletters based on specific user configurations, enhancing user engagement and satisfaction.

5. New features: The introduction of new features also significantly enhanced the Tangy Market app. A News page was added, providing users with a feed of music industry news and upcoming events previously available only on the website. A feature allowing users to gift shares to others was also introduced, mainly aimed at enhancing engagement during festive periods.

Olga Stern

Tangy market

Results

Through their collaboration with UKAD, Tangy Market achieved significant improvements:

1. Enhanced User Experience: The app's redesign and improved user flow led to a more intuitive and visually appealing interface.

2. Robust backend: Enhanced backend infrastructure ensured better performance, security, and scalability.

3. New functionalities: Introducing new features like the news feed and gifting shares increased user engagement and satisfaction, adding significant value to Tangy Market's platform.

4. Cross-platform efficiency: Our expertise in React Native improved the application's stability and ensured cost-effective development and consistency across iOS, Android, and web platforms.

UKAD's comprehensive approach to addressing Tangy Market's needs resulted in a more robust, user-friendly, and feature-rich app. This successful collaboration has significantly improved Tangy Market's operations, proving that UKAD is a reliable nearshore development partner.