Live stream DJ music from around world through this app

At almost every gathering of friends for a house party ever held, handling music commonly becomes the sole job of one person — plugging his or her phone to the speakers, making sure everyone’s happy with the tunes and shuffling them soon enough before boredom sets in among others. It was similar frustration that led medical-doctor-turned-entrepreneur Alexander Mathew, his brother Basil Mathew, and a friend Krishnaraj Muthukumar into entrepreneurs. Their recently-launched mobile application Pocket Jockey allows listeners to live stream the beats of disc jockeys (DJs) spinning from their consoles in any part of the world. The app allows people to play music by professionalDJs for their house parties, weddings and other events, without actually having to hire a DJ.

“Every time we have had a party at home, we would have to connect the phone to speakers and constantly keep changing the songs throughout the night, which is tiresome. After a few such instances, we decided to create ‘Pocket Jockey’ so people could play the music of DJs live. The unique aspect about the music played by DJs is that it is unique and dynamic. Since the platform allows live streaming, someone in Chennai can play the music of a DJ in London, Dubai or Spain,” says Alexander, who recently made his debut as a Tamil cinema actor, director and producer through the film Ethirvinaiyatru.

The app, which currently has about a dozen DJs on board, allows users to access the platform for free. “Listeners can rate the DJs with their ‘likes’. Until the DJ hits the minimum number of ‘likes’ required, his or her music can be accessed freely. After that, the music can be played by paying a fee,” elaborates Alexander. With a team of 40 people working on the app from Chennai and Dubai simultaneously, the platform is aggressively adding more DJs to the app. “After we have more DJs with us, we will work on marketing the platform for users,” he adds. The app’s novel mechanism of getting DJ music to people’s phones has been appealing to the music mixing masters, notes Alexander. “We have had to do no convincing for the DJs to be on our platform as they are happy to have their music find a wider audience. Most of the DJs have a console right at their homes. From the comfort of a home, they can now present their beats to people around the world. We wanted the app to be simple and easy to use for all,” he stresses.

The app is already finding many takers during the wedding season, points out Alexander, a family physician who runs a clinic in the city. “We have already had people approaching us to use the app for theirweddings,” he says. Turning into an entrepreneur with the platform feels exciting, but not as challenging as studying medicine, he laughs.