In perfect harmony? Actually, don’t get hung up on the ‘perfect’ part. The Choral Hub wants to encourage people to sing who may have avoided it before through embarrassment or a lack of confidence in their own abilities.
Based in the UK, its first product is an app called Tchzant (pronounced: chant) which you could describe as Yousician meets Duolingo, but for your voice.
That means a program of bitesize lessons, with a system of points, badges and social features wrapped around it. Aimed at novices and amateurs, Tchzant is launching first in the UK before a future global rollout.
It is already getting some buzz in the music/tech world, winning both the audience and jury choice awards at Music Tectonics’ recent ‘Swimming With Narwhals’ startup contest, which was presented by BandLab – a company that knows a thing or two about building a popular music-making community.
“80% of my conversations are ‘It’s interesting what you’re doing, but don’t make me try to sing!’” says CEO Xann Schwinn, who co-founded the company with conductor and music education campaigner Suzi Digby OBE.
“In my lifetime, there’s been a shift: shows like America’s Got Talent and The X Factor and other ways we consume music make us feel that this is what good singing sounds like, and if you don’t sound like this, nobody wants to hear you.”
“Don’t sing lullabies, don’t sing at karaoke, you’ll embarrass yourself. Yet singing used to be part of our culture: pub songs, working songs… Everyone can sing, and it’s good for you, from mental health benefits to social cohesion!”
What is The Choral Hub and Tchzant all about?
First things first: The Choral Hub is the company and Tchzant is its first app, but there’s a bigger story here. Schwinn says the company wants to “build a vocal ecosystem of music” that will include virtual events and other online features, with the app acting as a gateway.
The app is structured into lessons focusing on the skills of pitch and rhythm accuracy, breath control, ear training and remembering lyrics. Users work their way up through levels by completing challenges based on a catalogue of songs.
Tchzant is launching at a time when gamified learning and lifestyle apps are increasingly popular. Duolingo for learning languages; Headspace for practising wellbeing; Lumosity and Peak for training your brain and more.
“Some of the conversations I was having pre-pandemic were ‘I don’t understand a gaming platform for music education: it’ll never work, don’t talk down to adults’. But these apps have pioneered the idea of learning through gaming in a lightweight way,” says Schwinn.
“Even in the investor space, they see that people are okay to learn for five minutes a day, thanks to those successes that have happened. And Duolingo allows me to have a casual conversation with my parents, who are of a generation that didn’t grow up with apps: they understand what I’m building!”
The business model for Tchzant, like many of those other apps, is freemium. Its core curriculum is free, but the plan is to make money from in-app purchases: a la carte songs to learn; monthly subscriptions for access to the full catalogue; and one-to-one vocal coaching.
How is The Choral Hub working with the music industry?
A singing app would be much less fun if it was restricted to songs that are in the public domain, so licensing is an important part of the company’s plans for Tchzant.
Schwinn and her team have already been talking to music publishers, and she detects a genuine enthusiasm among rightsholders for licensing more startups in the music education field.
“The pandemic has changed a lot of the conversations we’ve been having. Publishers recognise that music education is the next big space,” she says.
“People are really open minded. I’m such an optimist – I’m a glass-all-the-way-full person always! – but there has been a huge shift in the conversation in the last year and a half. Yes, licensing has challenges, but it’s important to get it right, and we feel like we’re in a really good place with it.”
One creative part of The Choral Hub’s job is to license the right songs for its purposes. It doesn’t need every song in the history of music, but it does need a well-curated catalogue that work for its educational purposes, while also encouraging Tchzant users to keep learning.
“It’s this push-and-pull of what you should program: what has worked for music education before, and what people actually want to sing to, and how you create a balance between them,” says Schwinn.
“For many people, this might be about learning some kids’ songs to sing with their kids or grandkids, or lullabies. Maybe it’s Christmas carols, church hymns for that season, or five karaoke songs they want to prepare for Friday night.”
What are the opportunities ahead for Tchzant and The Choral Hub?
The startup’s primary focus is adults, but Schwinn hopes to one day support children and schools with other products.
Funding cuts have hit music particularly hard in schools in the UK, so the government’s commitment to the subject has been questioned, although it has promised to publish a new ‘National Plan for Music Education’ to take things forward.
Schwinn is hopeful. “I’m really interested to see what they come up with: it’s a big opportunity.”
In the meantime, The Choral Hub is building its song catalogue and initial user base over the next year, before training its sights on what it sees as an addressable market of 91 million people across the UK, US and Europe.
And, as noted earlier, it’s not just about the app. “Tchzant is one of many products. We had our first virtual event in December, and we’re rolling that out as a program that people can participate in,” says Schwinn.
“How can we build an ecosystem where people can sing with others online? Where they can do vocal warmups in the morning? How can we create this vocal ecosystem of music? The Choral Hub is the hub that encapsulates all that.”
How is The Choral Hub building its team?
From the start, Schwinn and co-founder Digby have been gathering an impressive group of advisors for their startup.
The Choral Hub’s advisory board includes broadcasting veteran Sue Hollick OBE; former Amazon director of machine learning Neil Lawrence; classical composer John Rutter; gospel conductor Karen Gibson MBE; former Music Publishers Association CEO Sarah Osborn; and the CFO of the UK’s Digital Catapult innovation centre Noeline Sanders.
“You have to surround yourself with the right advisors,” says Schwinn, who has drawn lessons from previous startups that she founded, including tech startup Musiqli and a company called Concanenda that used technology to make choral music more accessible.
She has also used those lessons in building The Choral Hub’s team, focusing initially on finding “other likeminded people who understood it without having to explain it”, then expanding out with specific skillsets as Tchzant took shape.
“It’s about building a community around you who gets what you’re doing, and picking those people who you need to solve the problems that need to be solved,” says Schwinn.
“It’s also about the diversity of thought: ensuring you’re not just choosing people from the same community, but that you’re choosing young people, older people, people of different backgrounds, different experiences, different universities.”
“You’re going to solve the most complicated problems when you have the greatest diversity of thought at the table. I want people around me who are going to challenge what I think. It’s going to make me stronger and the business stronger. So at every step, we’re asking can we be more diverse. After all, we’re building an app that’s supposed to help everybody.”
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