#29 on Indonesia's social top grossing chart with 1.7M installs: how a "mom's karaoke room" makes money from gifts
What it is An Indonesian online karaoke voice-room app: queue up to sing, chat, send gifts, and play small games like Ludo and Domino inside the room.
Why it took off It targets Indonesian middle-aged women who are bored at home, love singing, and want friends. Gifts, family rankings, host agencies, and coin-based mini-games keep a small group of payers spending, and two years of Google video ads keep bringing in new users.
CHow you could play it Indie devs should skip it. Teams that already run a voice-room backend could repeat it with a different audience, like Filipino or Indonesian workers in Hong Kong or the Gulf. Copy its newcomer tutorial room and family events, and run Google video ads targeted at worker neighborhoods.
- Data (updated daily) · first launch 2026-04-23 · 11-07 installs 1,698,478
Android · Total installs worldwide Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-07 (10 days, 9 observations). Google's detail page only refreshes install counts every other day, so a flat day doesn't mean nobody installed.
CatSing (renamed tamizo in late October) is an Indonesian karaoke-plus-voice-room app. It is not new. It launched in mid-2024, ran Google video ads for almost two years, and built up 1.7M installs. It adds about a thousand a day but holds steady at #20–#29 on Indonesia's Google Play social Top Grossing chart. What keeps it going is not product novelty. It is a group of middle-aged Indonesian women who love singing and are home with time on their hands, plus a set of gifts, families, host agencies, and in-room coin games that Chinese overseas teams have long run. Below: how it makes money, how many people it competes for, and who else could enter.
A five-star review from "Bunda"
On Sep 2026, 1, a user calling themselves "Bunda" (Mom) left CatSing five stars on Google Play: "I've loved singing since I was little, and only now that I'm older have I got to fulfill that wish. Thank you CatSing for letting people our age finally sing the passion we've held our whole lives. Everyone here is very kind and friendly." 44 people marked it helpful.
Eight weeks later, on Oct 27, another long-time user left one star: "I've been using CatSing since Aug 2024, 29. Management keeps getting worse. Official event rewards keep getting delayed, there's a pile of owed rewards, and now they're renaming the app to Tamizo. Are they planning to run away?"
Those two reviews sum up the product. The first shows who the users are and why they stay. The second shows how the money moves and where the app is heading.
What it is
Open the app and the home screen is rows of online karaoke rooms. You enter a room to queue, and when it's your turn you sing while others listen, chat, and send gifts. You can also record a cover and post it, with AI pitch correction and sound effects. New users are led into a "newcomer tutorial room" with a host guiding them. One review says: "There's a presenter guiding you, I haven't seen that in other apps" (9-13).
After the rename to tamizo at the end of October, the store page changed focus: besides singing, it now talks about "play Ludo, Carrom, Domino, Jackaroo in voice rooms", "no need to show your face", and "women-friendly". This is standard copy for voice-room apps from the Middle East and South Asia. The iOS version went to 4.0.0 from 11-06, renamed at the same time, and Arabic was added.
The developer is LAUGHTEK LIMITED. UK Companies House records show it was registered in July 2024, with an address in a London flat and one director, a Chinese national living in Heyuan, Guangdong. It reported 2025 employees in 1. Google ads are paid by a Hong Kong ad agency, and the official site has a Chinese version. It is a classic Chinese overseas team using an offshore entity.
Where the money comes from
The store page lists in-app purchases from Rp 16,000 to Rp 1,590,000 (about $1 to $100). Starting 11-04, the top tier went from $4.99 to $105.20, at the same time as a redesign that added games (Google Play, 11-06). Revenue is not visible from outside, but a few paths are clear:
- Top up to send gifts: Gifts sent to singers in a room count toward "room contribution" and "family contribution," with rankings, levels, and titles attached.
- Families, VIP, host agencies: Some families run daily singing contests, and "the rewards can be pocket money, either cash or gifts" (4-05). Hosts and agencies can withdraw, and "the most important thing is being able to withdraw" (4-19).
- In-room coin mini-games: One two-star review was blunt: "The sound quality and song library aren't being fixed, but there are more and more coin-betting games, mahjong, Olympus, fish shooting... Is this a karaoke app or a betting app?" (9-23)
Almost all negative reviews are about monetization rules. Gifts in the backpack no longer count toward room contribution, "so why top up?" (7-23,52 people liked this). "Easy to top up, hard to withdraw." The agency plan is "so bad, worse than the app next door" (9-12). 11-01 someone complained that QRIS (Indonesia's QR payment) was removed. The people fighting over these rules are the ones actually paying real money.
For reference: on Indonesia's Social Top Grossing chart at 11-06, tamizo was #29 with 1.7M installs; #24 was the similar HappyVV at 1.17M; #4 NiceYo had only 520K and #23 HiJoy only 32K (Google Play, 11-06). In this category, chart rank and install count barely correlate; rank is decided by how much a few people top up.
Where users come from
The main channel is Google video ads, confirmed. In Google's Ads Transparency Center, LAUGHTEK has 100–200 video creatives. The first began running on 2024-12-08, and new ones appear every month. 11-05 still has 3 running. Ads target mainly Indonesia. One style of copy is "one-tap pitch fix, become a singing god instantly," and another directly says "Paid Dating" (Indonesian version: kencan berbayar, paid dating).
Indonesians abroad are also targeted, inferred. Starting August 2026, some creatives ran in 16 countries at once: the six Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, plus Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei. These are where Indonesian overseas workers are most concentrated. tamizo also reached #36 on Hong Kong's social Top Grossing (10-29, 11-01), which fits. There is no direct evidence.
Room operations and retention of old users, confirmed. Newcomer tutorial rooms, hosts guiding users, and daily family activities. Many reviews mention "used it for a year and a half" or "almost a year."
Its own social media reach is small. The official TikTok account has 10.6k followers and 378 posts. The top video has about 20k views. The copy says "a karaoke app that makes money, and you can win an iPhone" and it recruits hosts. It hasn't posted since August 2025. Searches for catsing and tamizo on TikTok show no organic buzz. On X there were 0 mentions in a year and no media coverage.
After the rename, daily new installs stayed around a thousand. The rename shows no visible boost in volume.
What users want
Reading the reviews, the frequent words are Bunda, emak-emak (the aunties), kami yg tua2 (us older folks), IRT (housewives), "bored at home," "made friends from all over," and "like being in a real KTV private room." One user wrote: "suaraku pas-pasan" (my voice is just so-so), yet people still listen and cheer.
What they want is not to record a great track. That's the strength of StarMaker and Smule, and one negative review complains that CatSing's recording "is mono, worse than WeSing or StarMaker." They want a room they can visit every day, where people know them and applaud when they finish singing. The reviews also show the other side. Some say the place is a "cheating center," some were scammed out of money, some ask for crackdowns on borderline content in events, and "minors are playing too" (8-07).
Who it's competing with
| Product | Google Play scale (11-06) | How it differs from tamizo |
|---|---|---|
| StarMaker | 648M installs, +1.74M in 7 days | Indonesia's karaoke leader. Re-recording and a song library, two orders of magnitude bigger. |
| Smule | 381M installs, #3 on Indonesia's music Top Grossing | Subscription recording. tamizo is free and relies on gifts. |
| WeSing (Tencent's overseas karaoke app) | 120M installs, #7 on Indonesia's music Top Grossing | A big-company version with nearly the same format |
| HappyVV | 1.17M installs, 7 days +15k. Indonesia social Top Grossing 21–26, Vietnam 16–21. | The closest peer: a Chinese team doing karaoke, chat, and parties, with nearly the same size and ranking, and also present in Vietnam and Malaysia. |
| Hago | 300M installs, #12 on Indonesia's social Top Grossing | Games plus voice rooms, with games at the core. tamizo's redesign is filling that gap. |
| Voice-room apps like SUGO and Yalla | SUGO 81M, Yalla 146M | The Middle East and South Asia "voice room + Ludo" template. The games tamizo added after the rename come from here. |
| Video dating apps like Chamet, Poppo, and Tigo | 37M–78M | They hold the top spots on Indonesia's social Top Grossing with paid companionship. The Paid Dating in tamizo's ads taps the same demand. |
On 11-06 Indonesia's Social Top Grossing top 80, you can count dozens of voice-room, live-stream, and video-dating apps, mostly from Chinese teams. tamizo sits in the middle of that pack, and its only differentiation is "singing as the entry point, users skew older", while HappyVV does the same thing.
If it were you
C. It teaches a solid lesson, but this is not a market for indie devs or small teams.
One-line verdict: "Interest entry + real-time rooms + gift agencies + in-room games" reached the top 30 on Indonesia's social Top Grossing with 1.7M installs, so the money is real. But the space is packed with Chinese teams that have backend systems, ad buyers, and agency operations. tamizo itself follows the template, so anyone copying it gets no advantage it doesn't already have.
Who it suits: Overseas entertainment teams that already have a voice-room system (rooms, gifts, families, agencies, withdrawals, risk control) and want to launch another product with a new interest entry or a new audience.
Who it doesn't suit: Indie devs with 1–3 people. The hard part of this business isn't the code, it's operations: someone has to host rooms every day, run events, manage agencies, and handle withdrawals and scam complaints. Coin-betting games and the "paid dating" hints run into Google Play policy and Indonesia's crackdown on online gambling, and renaming or swapping packages is routine. Without an operations team, payment channels, and withdrawal rails, you won't keep the money even if you build it.
How to do it (for teams with a backend): Stop making Indonesian karaoke, because StarMaker, WeSing, and HappyVV are already there. Change the audience. tamizo's ad targeting suggests overseas workers are a separate market: people working in Hong Kong, the Gulf, or Singapore, who are lonely, have wages, and have few native-language communities. Filipinos have an even stronger karaoke culture than Indonesians, and there are large numbers of Filipino workers abroad. "Karaoke rooms for overseas Filipinos" is a direction worth checking first (inferred, not verified how crowded similar apps are). For the product, follow tamizo: a newcomer tutorial room, hosts guiding users, and daily family activities. Hold off on stuffing in betting games.
How to acquire users: Mainly Google app ads (UAC / YouTube video). Test a batch of each creative type: "one-tap pitch fix, become a singing god" and "find someone from home to sing with in a foreign land." Pick countries by where workers cluster, not by nationality markets. Long-time users and hosts in rooms are the second channel: have family leaders and hosts bring in new people, with revenue shares based on contribution.
Deadline: There is no hard window. This is a long-term acquisition and long-term operations business. But every time another Chinese team pushes the voice-room template into a new audience, that audience has one less open slot.
Ways to be wrong: (1) If tamizo falls out of Indonesia's social Top Grossing top 50 within 3 months of the redesign with games and rename, then "singing as the entry point" can't hold up the redesign, and the differentiation is thinner than it looks. (2) If it stays in the top 30 on the Gulf states' or Hong Kong's Top Grossing, then the overseas worker audience is really valuable and deserves its own product. (3) If Google Play delists it or it changes packages again, then the risk of the coin-game revenue line is bigger than the revenue itself.
---
Data and sources: Google Play store page, reviews, and charts (Indonesia store, 2026-10-29 to 11-06; reviews are originally in Indonesian, translated here). Google Ads Transparency Center (LAUGHTEK LIMITED). UK Companies House (company number 15849984). App Store lookup (iOS version). The official site catsing.me (now redirects to tamizo.net). TikTok @catsingofficialindonesia. Anywhere marked "inferred" is an inference.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one StarMaker Android 2013 Play 648M installs, 7 days +1.74M Indonesia's karaoke leader, focused on re-recording and a song library. tamizo focuses on real-time KTV rooms and gifting, and is smaller by two orders of magnitude. Smule Android 2012 Play 381M installs, #3 on Indonesia's music Top Grossing Subscription recording. tamizo is free and monetizes through gifts. WeSing (Tencent's overseas karaoke app) Android 2017 Play 120M installs, #7 on Indonesia's music Top Grossing A big-company karaoke app with party rooms. Nearly the same format; tamizo is a smaller version of it. HappyVV(51VV) Android 2022-12 Play 1.17M installs, 7 days +15k. Indonesia social Top Grossing 21–26, Vietnam 16–21. The closest peer. Also a Chinese-run karaoke, chat, and party app, with nearly the same size and ranking, and also present in Vietnam and Malaysia. Hago Android 2018 Play 300M installs, Indonesia social Top Grossing #12 Games plus voice rooms, with games at the core. tamizo's redesign is filling exactly that gap. Voice-room apps like SUGO, Yalla, and Tami Android 2016–2023 SUGO 81.1M, Yalla 146M, Tami (com.ysl.talk) 785k Voice rooms in the Middle East / South Asia with Ludo templates; the games added after the tamizo rename come from here. The hook is games, not singing. Video dating on Chamet / Poppo / Tigo etc. 1v1 Android 2019–2022 37M–78M installs, holding a top spot on the Indonesia social Top Grossing chart Pure paid companionship. tamizo's ads say "Paid Dating" to ride the same demand, but the entry point is karaoke. - Where users come from
- Confirmed Google App Campaigns (UAC / YouTube video): the googleads library shows LAUGHTEK with 131 video creatives (the transparency center shows 100–200). Running continuously since 2024-12-08, and 11-05 are still live with 3 in rotation. Mainly Indonesia; from 2026-08 some creatives also ran in 16 other countries. The payer is HK agency HongKong Luckstar Technology. The copy pushes one-tap pitch correction and "Paid Dating / kencan berbayar".
- Inferred Targeting Indonesian overseas workers (HK/TW, Singapore/Malaysia, the six GCC states): the countries in the multi-market creatives line up with where Indonesian overseas workers cluster. Ranking #36 on the Hong Kong social Top Grossing chart and iOS Arabic support also fit. No direct evidence.
- Confirmed Own TikTok / IG / FB accounts recruiting hosts with "karaoke that makes money": TikTok @catsingofficialindonesia has 10.6k followers and 378 posts, the top post reaching about 20k views. Copy: "Aplikasi Karaoke Penghasil Uang? CatSing Bisa Cuan & Menang iPhone!" Last updated 2025-08. No organic traction on TikTok.
- Confirmed "Self-media" channel in Adjust attribution: in 2024-12-19's Wayback archive, the Play landing link carries adjust_reftag … utm_source=selfmedia_fenggan.
- Confirmed Old-user retention and room operations (beginner tutorial rooms, presenter mentoring): reviews say "user catsing sejak 29 Agustus 2024", "join catsing udh 1,5th", "diarahkan ke room khusus edukasi buat pemula".
- Inferred Renamed to ride Tami's coattails: the names are similar, but Tami has only 785k installs, and daily new installs didn't change after the rename.
Why tamizo (formerly CatSing) works
Package com.catsing.music · developer LAUGHTEK LIMITED · Google Play Social · research date 2026-11-06
Bottom line
It isn't a new product. CatSing is an Indonesian karaoke + voice-room social app that launched in mid-2024. Google video ads have run nonstop since 2024-12, and it has accumulated 1.7M installs in two years. Revenue comes from coin top-ups and gifts, families, room contributions, host/agency (agency) withdrawals, plus a growing set of in-room coin mini-games. In late October it was renamed tamizo and added Ludo / Carrom / Domino / Jackaroo, moving toward the Yalla / SUGO "voice room + games" model. In the recall it was taken for a "new product launched 10-30", but it was really the store's first-release date reset by the rename. It reached #20–29 on the Indonesia social Top Grossing chart using a standard playbook for Chinese going-global entertainment apps: paid acquisition, KTV rooms, host agencies, and gift economics, aimed at middle-aged Indonesian karaoke fans. The playbook itself has nothing new.
1. Basic facts
| items | Data | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total installs | 1,691,008(10-29) → 1,698,478(11-06), +8 in 7,470 days, about 900–1,400/day | googleplay library app_snap |
| Rating | 4.05 stars from 4,307 reviews (5-star 2,864 / 1-star 663) | Play store page (gl=id), 11-06 live pull |
| Real launch | Play shows 2024-07-03 listed; iOS version (id6474302221, bundle net.everysing.music) 2024-04-12; UK company 2024-07-22 registered; the earliest review in the database predates the store date 10-30 (released_reset=True) | Play store page, iTunes lookup, Companies House |
| Version | Android 3.31.1; iOS 11-06 just moved to 4.0.0, renamed to tamizo at the same time | googleplay library; iTunes lookup |
| Charts | Indonesia social Top Grossing #20 (10-29) → #28–29 (from 11-02); Indonesia social Top Free #86–123; Hong Kong social Top Grossing #36 (10-29, 11-01) | googleplay library chart_rank |
| In-app purchases | Rp 16,000 – Rp 1,590,000 per tier (US store shows $0.99 – $105.20; from 11-04 the top tier rose from $4.99 to $105.20) | app_snap, Play store page |
| iOS | The Indonesia store has only 51 ratings (4.2 stars); other countries have 0–2: iOS has almost no volume, revenue is on Android | iTunes lookup (multiple stores) |
Rename timeline: around 10-22 the in-app notice said "CatSing will be renamed tamizo" (user reviews: "aku lihat di apk nama catsing akan di rubah tamizo", "malah skrng mau peralihan ganti nama APK ke Tamizo") → 10-30 Play store info updated, first-release date reset → catsing.me redirected to tamizo.net in 301 → 11-03 Android update, top IAP tier became $105 → 11-06 iOS 4.0.0 renamed.
2. Who runs it
- LAUGHTEK LIMITED: UK company (number 15849984), registered 2024-07-22, registered address is a flat in London E14. Sole director ZHANG Yuankun, Chinese national, living in Heyuan, Guangdong; this is the only company in his name. 2025 annual return reports 1 employees. A typical offshore shell entity (Companies House).
- The Google Ads advertiser is "LAUGHTEK LIMITED" (HK-registered, verified), and the payer is HongKong Luckstar Technology Co., Ltd. (advertiser in the googleads library). Luckstar is a Hong Kong ad-buying / account-opening agency that appears repeatedly in Google community posts and media as the entity paying for several HK advertisers (Google Play community thread, cofacts), and also shows up in the IPO filing of Yidian Tianxia. It suggests the team uses the standard agency payment chain of Chinese going-global apps.
- 2024-12's Play landing link carries
adjust_reftag … utm_source=selfmedia_fenggan(Wayback archive), i.e. Adjust attribution with a "self-media" channel label, a habit typical of domestic teams. - The official site tamizo.net has a Chinese version ("Tamizo is an innovative music social app…"). The developer email is a personal gmail, and the Play contact phone is a Thai number, +66.
3. Competitors
| Product | Where | Launched | Scale (googleplay library, 11-06) | How it differs from tamizo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| StarMaker | Android / iOS | 2013 | 648M installs, +1.74M in 7 days | The absolute leader in Indonesian karaoke, with strong recording and song catalog. tamizo is two orders of magnitude smaller, focused on voice rooms and gifting rather than recording. |
| Smule | Android / iOS | 2012 | 381M installs, #3 on Indonesia's music Top Grossing | Subscription karaoke in Europe and the US. Reviews mention people "coming over from Smule, which charges". tamizo is free and earns through gifts. |
| WeSing (Tencent's overseas karaoke app) | Android / iOS | 2017 | 120M installs, #7 on Indonesia's music Top Grossing | Big-company "karaoke + party rooms" with nearly the same product shape. tamizo is the mini version. |
| HappyVV(51VV / 17sing) | Android | 2022-12 | 1.17M installs, +7 in 15 days; Indonesia social Top Grossing #21–26, Vietnam #16–21 | Closest peer: also a Chinese team's "karaoke + chat + party" app, with nearly identical scale and chart rank, and it also operates in Vietnam and Malaysia. |
| Hago | Android | 2018 | 300M installs, Indonesia social Top Grossing #12 | Hago's "games + voice rooms" model, where games are the core. tamizo is currently filling exactly this gap. |
| Voice-room apps like SUGO, Yalla, and Tami | Android | 2016–2023 | SUGO 81.1M; Yalla 146M; Tami (com.ysl.talk, SHENGQU TEAM) 785k | Middle East / South Asia voice rooms + Ludo template. The Ludo / Carrom / Jackaroo games tamizo added after the rename come from this template set. Tami is even smaller than CatSing, so riding Tami's name doesn't bring much volume. |
| Video dating on Chamet / Poppo / Tigo etc. 1v1 | Android | 2019–2022 | 37M–78M | Holds a top spot on the Indonesia social Top Grossing chart, in the "paid companionship" format. CatSing's ads saying "Paid Dating / kencan berbayar" show it is also tapping into this demand. |
Conclusion: there are many similar products, and most are bigger. CatSing is a mid-tier player in the Indonesian "social karaoke" niche, with scale and chart rank roughly on par with HappyVV.
4. How users found it
1) Google App Campaigns (UAC / YouTube video), running continuously from 2024-12 to now, confirmed. The googleads library records 131 LAUGHTEK creatives (the transparency center shows 100–200), all video. The first creative first appeared on 2024-12-08 and ran until 2026-03, for 408 consecutive days. New creatives appeared every month of 2025-2026, and 11-05 still has 3 running. Mainly Indonesia. From 2026-08 some creatives ran in 16 countries at once: AE, BH, KW, OM, QA, SA, HK, TW, SG, MY, BN, TH, plus DE, NL, RE. Copy includes "Satu klik untuk memperbaiki suara, langsung jadi dewa nyanyi!" (one-tap voice fix, instantly a singing god), and "Sing duets, edit voice effects, share music, Paid Dating, and join live chats" (Indonesian version: kencan berbayar).
- Inferred (unverified): the six GCC states, HK, TW, SG, MY, and Brunei where the multi-market creatives ran are exactly where Indonesian overseas workers (PMI) concentrate. It's likely buying Indonesians working abroad, not locals. Ranking #36 on the Hong Kong social Top Grossing chart also fits.
2) Own TikTok / Instagram / Facebook accounts and "make money" pitch, confirmed, but small in volume. TikTok @catsingofficialindonesia has 10.6k followers and 378 posts, with the top post at about 20k views, last updated 2025-08. Copy centers on "Aplikasi Karaoke Penghasil Uang? CatSing Bisa Cuan & Menang iPhone!" (a karaoke app that pays, and you can win an iPhone) and "Kamu mau cuan ngonten dance", recruiting hosts and content creators. There is also Instagram @catsing.karaoke and a Facebook page (found via TikHub and Jina search). Searches for "catsing" and "tamizo" on TikTok show no organic traction.
3) Tutorial-style short videos on YouTube, confirmed. For example "How to Use the CatSing App for Beginners" and "How to Get Lots of Coins in the CatSing App". Long tail.
4) Old-user retention and room operations, confirmed. Reviews include "Saya user catsing sejak 29 Agustus 2024" and "join catsing udh 1,5th". New users are led into "beginner tutorial rooms" with presenter / mentor guidance ("Ada presenter yg memandu yg belum pernh sy temui di apk lain", "diarahkan ke room khusus edukasi buat pemula").
5) Renamed to ride Tami / Yalla, likely a large component. The names are indeed similar, but Tami itself has only 785k installs. After the rename, new installs over the next 7 days didn't change (about 1,000 per day). No visible volume gain from the rename so far.
Not found: media coverage, X discussion (x-radar: 0 posts in a year), Meta ads (no records in metaads library). In the TikTok ad library it is listed as unconfirmed.
5. Why it works (at this level)
- They picked the right audience: middle-aged Indonesian karaoke fans. Reviews are full of "Bunda", "emak-emak", "kami yg tua2" (moms, aunties, us older folks), bored at home, loving to sing and wanting friends. Praise mostly says "I can sing and make friends from everywhere." StarMaker and Smule focus on recording songs; CatSing focuses on live KTV rooms and companionship.
- Gifting plus host agencies turned a small user base into high ARPU. Users complain about the monetization rules: backpack gifts don't count toward room contribution, top-up bonuses are useless, family contribution, late event rewards, a bad agency program, hard cash-outs ("top up continuously but cash out difficult"; the developer 2026-07 replied to the withdrawal issue in Indonesian). With only 1.7M installs and about 1,000 new installs a day, it still holds steady at #20–29 on Indonesia's social Top Grossing chart, and that's down to this.
- In-room coin mini-games are a hidden revenue source. One reviewer of 2026-09 says "malah game taruhan koin nya makin banyak … sperti mahyong lah, olimpus lah, tembak ikan lah": more and more coin-betting games with each update, like mahjong, Olympus (slots), and fish shooting. It's a common way Chinese-run voice-room apps on the go-global path add revenue. 11-04 The top in-app purchase tier went from $4.99 to $105.20 at the same time as the redesign that added games.
- Steady, long-running paid acquisition. Google video ads running for two years, plus targeted ads at Indonesian workers abroad, keep a baseline of about 1,000 installs a day.
- Hints of "paid dating." Ads openly say Paid Dating. Reviews repeatedly mention "pusat perselingkuhan" (a cheating hub), "banyak penjahat kelamin yang suka modus" (lots of creeps who use the app to pick people up), and "banyak yang kena tipu seperti minta uang" (lots of people scammed into giving money). Adults' need for emotional connection and companionship is a strong reason to pay.
6. Differentiation
Compared with StarMaker and WeSing, it pushes recording into the background and leads with "KTV voice rooms + newbie mentoring + gifts / families / guilds": basically a voice-room app that uses karaoke as the entry point. Compared with Hago, SUGO, and Yalla, its entry point is singing rather than games, and its users skew older Indonesian. But peers like HappyVV do almost the same thing, so the differentiation isn't unique. It got where it is through audience choice, operations, and monetization, not product form. The rename to tamizo actually weakens that differentiation: it moves toward the Ludo, Domino, and Jackaroo voice-room game templates common in the Middle East and South Asia, and Arabic was added to the iOS languages. The likely goal is to push the same product into the Gulf and South Asia.
7. How many people know about it
Hardly anyone knows about it. No press coverage, 0 discussions on X, no public revenue, and the TikTok official account has only 10k followers. But the "Indonesian voice room / karaoke social" niche it sits in is already crowded with Chinese teams (36 and 人人都是产品经理 have both written about Chinese pan-entertainment apps going global to Indonesia), so "nobody knows" doesn't mean there's a gap.
8. What to borrow
- The playbook is copyable: karaoke (or any hobby) as the entry point → live rooms + newbie mentoring → gifts / families / VIP / host agencies → in-room coin mini-games to fill the revenue gap. A UK shell company with one employee and a proxy ad account can get it going, and 1.7M installs is enough to sustain roughly #20 on Indonesia's social Top Grossing chart.
- Acquisition idea: target overseas-worker hubs (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, the Gulf). These users have high ARPU, strong loneliness, and few native-language communities, so they're worth treating as a market of their own.
- Risks: paid dating, coin-betting mini-games, and hard cash-outs all run into Google Play policy and local regulation (Indonesia enforces online gambling rules strictly). Apps like this get renamed, repackaged, and re-registered often.
9. Still unclear
- Revenue scale: no outside estimate exists for what Indonesia social Top Grossing #20–29 corresponds to in money.
- The share of installs coming from multi-country ads, and whether the Hong Kong chart users are Indonesian workers (inferred, not verified).
- The real reason for the tamizo rename is unclear: a market switch (Middle East / South Asia), avoiding negative reviews or policy trouble, or preparing for a later repackage.
- Team background: no record found for the Heyuan director ZHANG Yuankun or the company behind it. Luckstar is only the ad-buying proxy and doesn't imply a shareholder link.
- The recall note that "Tami comes from Guangzhou Shengke": in the library, Tami's developer name is SHENGQU TEAM, unverified.
Sources
- googleplay library (app_snap / chart_rank / app_profile / v_chart, 2026-10-29 to 11-06)
- googleads library (advertiser AR16937543950883880961, creative, advertiser_snap)
- Google Play listing and reviews (google-play-scraper, gl=id, hl=id, pulled 2026-11-06): play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.catsing.music
- iTunes lookup id 6474302221 (multiple storefronts)
- Companies House:find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/1…
- Website: catsing.me → tamizo.net
- TikTok @catsingofficialindonesia(TikHub);www.tiktok.com/@catsingofficialindonesia/video/7526828680933…
- Wayback CDX:play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.catsing.music&referrer=adjust_reftag…utm_source=selfmedia_fenggan(2024-12-19)
- Luckstar:support.google.com/googleplay/thread/395756167 ;cofacts.tw/article/1vm934cpvwuhy
- x-radar search for "catsing" and "tamizo" over the last 365 days: 0 posts