A recent OU alum released the iPhone app RapChat last summer. In August, it had 2,000 downloads. As of last month it had over 300,000.
Two months after an Ohio University alumnus released the hip-hop voice-messaging app RapChat, 2,000 people had it on their phones. Six months later, that number is more than 100 times that.
Seth Miller, a 2014 OU graduate, released RapChat in June 2014 with the hope that 10,000 people would download it by the end of December, he said in a previous interview with The Post. Four days ago, Miller dumped the app’s download statistics, along with other analytics, in a post on Medium, revealing that RapChat has been downloaded more than 300,000 times.
RapChat allows users to record short raps over pre-recorded beats and send them to other users. The app was the winner of Athens’ Startup Weekend 2013, the second iteration of a local contest that offers entrepreneurs prize money for promising businesses.
RapChat saw over 37,000 downloads during the last week of February, and Miller said he knows why.
In late November, the app’s developers gave users the ability to post links to their raps on Twitter or Facebook. That, combined with word-of-mouth marketing, is why the app is getting around so quickly, Miller said.
“When people record a rap, they want to share it with their networks to let them know that they're rapping,” Miller said in an email. “Whether their rap is actually good or not doesn't really matter. In fact, most of our users are awful at rapping and that includes myself.”
Miller said total downloads isn’t the number he cares about most. He highlighted the number of RapChats sent per week — more than 375,000 in late February — as well as the number of people who use the app on a weekly and daily basis, which has been steadily increasing since the start of the year.
It isn’t hard to find fans of the app. Searching “RapChat” on Twitter yields a bevy of tweets similar to the ones below.
To do my research paper or to rapchat................rapchat
— Halle_berry (@Hallevad) March 30, 2015
TN>ATL>LAX>SYD>MEL today. So many layovers. Time to work on my Rapchat game.
— dan lian (@dan_lian) March 30, 2015
Miller said he is most focused on improving the app’s retention rate — the number of people who continue using the app after the first day, week and month.
Right now, about half the people who try RapChat use it again after one day. After one month, that number drops to about 25 percent.
Despite the recent success, RapChat higher-ups are far from finished developing the app, Miller said. There are plans to get celebrities involved with RapChat and create an in-app registration system. Users currently have to sign in through Facebook.
“We plan to loop in some of pop culture's most polarizing figures and give fans a chance to engage with them on a different level,” Miller said in an email. “Picture being able to view Wiz Khalifa's 30-(second) freestyle right from your phone. Makes way more sense than following him on Twitter to see what his publicist tweets.”
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For now, RapChatters don’t have to deal with pesky advertisements or paid add-ons. Miller said RapChat is more focused on building an active community than making money, though he added there are monetization strategies in place, added that that “won’t be for a while.”
The app is currently only available on the Apple App Store. Miller said he’s unsure when an
Android version will be released.
@JeremyHTweets
