A Chat With Adam Kidron

How did you come up with the idea of Yonder?
I used to run a big music label called Urban Box Office and we sold most of our assets and a very popular song to EMI records for which I received a royalty from the company. The royalty was however miniscule compared to the popularity of the song. I realized that the song was being played but I was not paid accordingly. What came to my realization was that the origin of the song should not matter, and so I came up with the idea of people paying for the consumption of music. Therefore I came up with the model where the license is embedded into either a device or data plan and the value of the license is divided by the amount of plays. Hence, the birth of Yonder took place.

Could you highlight some of Yonder's global and local achievements?
Honestly, Yonder is too young to have many achievements. We are here in Bangladesh, and we consider that to be an achievement. We launched in Malaysia in 2015, and as of now we have over 300,000 users. We are planning on launching Yonder in Pakistan and Sri Lanka soon. We are very active in the local market, arranging concerts to encourage users to consume music and get closer with the artists. So far, we have signed with famous artists in Bangladesh including James, LRB, Miles, Warfaze, Habib, Chirkutt, among many more and the list is expanding very fast, and we consider this an achievement for us.  

Is there a scope in the future to include contents from more unpopular, independent musicians in your portfolio?
This is not a plan for the future; we are working on this as we speak. We want to provide any legal piece of music on our platform. In the next step of the application, we will make it available for users to upload their own music onto our platform and manage it themselves. 

What has the feedback been like in Bangladesh from the time Yonder was launched till now?
The feedback has been positive even though there has been tremendous amount of turmoil in the country. Even from the artists that we have signed with, we have been receiving positive response and to us it is a signal to go ahead in full-swing. Bangladesh is a diverse market and we are very hopeful about it. 

Interviewed By: Syed Ahnaf Sadeed