A Turkish music school's rhythm app: ten thousand installs from its own loyal audience, and it dares to charge ₺500 a month

An Istanbul music shop built a rhythm app for the bağlama (Turkish long-necked lute, also called saz) and, in three-plus months, passed ten thousand installs on Google Play. It spent nothing on paid acquisition and never made the news. Its users came largely from the shop itself: a ten-year-old YouTube teaching channel, posts selling instruments, and the older customers who bought rhythm USB drives. This piece explains how it moved an old business into an app, why outsiders struggle to copy it, and which moves are worth taking.

A TikTok with 40k views, and the next day 660 more installs

On Nov 2, the TikTok account @ritimser posted a video of someone holding a bağlama and playing a Turkish folk song (türkü), with a drum beat from the app in the background. The caption was one line: "The accompaniment rhythm you hear was played with Ritim Ser." The account usually gets a few hundred views per post. This one reached 43k by 11-06. The next day, Google Play installs rose by 660.

This was the furthest-reaching post the app has made, at only 40k views. Ritim Ser's ten thousand installs weren't built one post at a time. Most came from the music school's customers and audience built up over the years.

What it is

Ritim Ser roughly means "spreading the rhythm." Bağlama players practicing, rehearsing, or playing at weddings and restaurants need a beat to play along to. The old options were accompaniment videos on YouTube or a USB drive full of rhythms plugged into a speaker. The app moves this onto the phone:

• The rhythm library covers three categories (Turkish folk, Turkish classical art music, and Arabesk), each tagged with its rhythm pattern (usûl) and BPM. Everything was recorded in a studio by Turkish percussionist Mehmet Akatay.
• You can build your own rhythm variations. There are dem sustained drones (Mey, strings, keyboard tones), plus bass and reverb controls.
• It accepts a physical pedal, so you can keep both hands on the instrument while playing.
• It includes a tuner (Ayaz Tune, with long-neck, short-neck and cura presets) plus the music school's teaching videos and sheet music.

The price isn't low. The Turkish App Store listing shows Pro at ₺499.99 a month, ₺2,499.99 for six months, and ₺1,999.99 a year, with a 3-day free trial.

背后是伊斯坦布尔 Pendik 区的琴行 Ayaz Müzik Aletleri。它的 YouTube 频道 Ayaz Müzik 2016 年开,15.4 万订阅,累计 3,408 万播放。App 外包给伊斯坦布尔的软件公司 Feri Soft 做(琴行 10-30 专门发了一条感谢视频)。iOS 上的卖家名叫 murat erol,App Store 有一条五星评论写「10 年前让我爱上 bağlama 的 Murat 老师,祝 App 顺利」,所以频道里讲课的老师很可能就是他本人(推断)。

How far it got

Launched on Play in Jul 24 and on iOS in Aug 15. The early numbers are third-party estimates, showing 7 new installs in the last 1,717 days. It has only appeared in Turkey's Music & Audio free category chart, ranging between #10-29 and #11-06 and at its best #77 to #147. It has never made a top grossing chart. The Turkish iOS store has 42 ratings averaging 4.4, with only 2 new ones in the last ten days.

Ten thousand installs in three-plus months is the volume of a small business, not a hit.

Where users came from: all in-house

Old video descriptions were rewritten to carry download links. Of the Ayaz Müzik channel's recent 50 videos, 47 open their description with "Download our rhythm app Ritim Ser now," followed by Play and App Store links. Videos from over a year ago were edited too. Most are from the "learn the bağlama in one minute" series, along with folk song singing lessons, each getting 15k to 48k views. New videos now get only a few thousand views, so the downloads mostly come from the long tail of older videos in search and recommendations.

Free months with every instrument sold. On Oct 21, the shop posted a Facebook ad for bağlama saying "Come to us and get Ritim Ser free for 2 months," with a WhatsApp number to order. Play installs rose by 1,554 that day, the highest point on the whole curve. But v1.6.0 also launched that same day, so it's unclear how much each contributed.

Refer 10 people, get 2 free months. A YouTube video from Sep 12, "200 kişiye ücretsiz kullanım" (free use for the first 200 people): you refer 10 new users to sign up, send over the first 3 and last 3 characters of their emails (for example meh…maz), and once verified, you get 2 free months. The verification is done by hand. The video has only 743 views, so the effect is limited.

Customers who used to buy rhythm USB drives. The shop used to sell rhythm USB drives for ₺1,000 each, along with EQ electric-acoustic cases with built-in rhythm. A Facebook promo video, "Bağlamaya Yoldaş, Ritme Ses Veren USB" (a bağlama companion, a USB that gives you rhythm), got 52k views, and its caption announced the app launch. The same people who had paid a one-time ₺1,000 were now steered into a monthly subscription.

The trade show hasn't arrived yet. From July to September the channel posted a few short videos titled "Ritim Ser at İMEEF 2026," but the 10-14 one gives the date clearly: Dec 3 to 6 at the Yenikapı Exhibition Center in Istanbul. So the trade show booth is currently a preview and hasn't brought in any installs yet.

I found no evidence it buys paid acquisition. The curve jumps with each post and video, which looks like organic posting, not ad spend.

What users say: good product, just expensive

The five-star App Store reviews mostly come from longtime students and people in the scene: "With Mehmet Akatay recording, the quality is completely different" and "Useful at every skill level."

The bad reviews are all about price. One one-star review from Oct 5:

"The free trial gives too few rhythms. ₺500 a month is outrageous. YouTube solves this. Make it a one-time purchase and it'd be more usable and affordable. You can tell a lot of work went into it, but it's expensive."

A two-star review from Oct 2 was blunter: "There are dozens of rhythms online for free, and ₺500 a month is too much. Think about a student, can they afford ₺500 a month?" The developer replied that they'd consider the pricing.

Its pricing rests on two things: authentic recordings by master players, and features that work on stage (pedal, dem drones). Charging working saz players who perform professionally can be justified. Charging students and hobbyists is harder, and they make up most of the YouTube teaching channel's audience.

Who it's competing with

No big company is building this. The market is basically the people in Turkey who play bağlama, and nobody has copied it yet.

If it were you

C: There's something to learn here, but copying it isn't worth the effort. It took off because of a music shop that has been running for ten years, a teaching channel with 150k subscribers that sells subscriptions, and a well-known percussionist. Outsiders can't get any of those three. The product itself isn't hard to build. The hard part is getting players to trust you and finding them. It spent over three months and all its private channels to get ten thousand installs, and its revenue isn't visible.

Who it suits: someone who already has an instrument community, like a teaching YouTuber, a music shop, or a music school; or a developer who can partner with people like that. The instrument can change. Oud, kanun, Persian tar, and Indian tabla all have "lots of players, hard-to-find authentic accompaniment, and a pile of free but unusable YouTube videos."

Who it doesn't suit: indie devs with no community channel who plan to rely on store search or paid acquisition. The niche is too small for paid acquisition to pay back, and these instrument communities run on word of mouth and teachers' recommendations, so an unknown app has a hard time getting in.

How to build it: find the people and the content first, then write code. Partner with a teacher or shop that has an audience, and have a well-known session player record a set of rhythms organized by pattern and tempo. That's the only real barrier. Copy the features: tempo control, custom rhythms, drones, Bluetooth pedal. Don't copy the monthly ₺500 price; the bad reviews already show why. Offer a one-time purchase, or sell rhythm packs, and add a separate subscription tier for professional players.

How to get users: follow its playbook, and it costs nothing. Swap the download link into the old descriptions of the partner's videos in bulk; give a few months of membership when someone buys an instrument; give membership to students who refer friends; move old customers over from the accompaniment USB sticks and audio packs they bought before. Post vertical TikTok videos of "playing the instrument + app accompaniment." Its two best-performing posts (43k and 22k) both used this format.

When to move before it does: there's no rush. This kind of demand has no season or window, and nobody is racing for it. If you want a specific date, watch the İMEEF instrument fair from Dec 3 to 6 and see whether it can push installs higher.

What would mean you read it wrong: ① It charts in Turkey's Music & Audio top grossing list, or its iOS rating clearly rises over two or three months. That would mean people really are paying a premium, and the mix of private channels and a known name is worth more than it looks. Then it's worth seriously looking at copying it for other instrument communities. ② The reverse: it cuts the monthly price by more than half or switches to a one-time purchase. That would mean the high price isn't selling, and there's less money in this community than it seems.

Data and sources

• Installs and charts: Google Play public install counts and third-party estimates (early data), Turkey store Music & Audio free category chart, as of 11-06.
• iOS: App Store Turkey store page (price, 42 ratings, review text, view at 11-06).
• Channels: YouTube Ayaz Müzik channel public data and video descriptions ("200 kişiye ücretsiz kullanım!!!" 9-12, "Canlı Stüdyo Ritimleriyle Tanışmaya Hazır Ol!" 10-14, "Feri Soft İle Zirvedeyiz" 10-30); Facebook Ayaz Müzik Aletleri page (10-21 instrument-sale posts, rhythm USB promo videos); TikTok @ritimser (view at 11-06).
• Competitors: Google Play Turkey store search for "bağlama ritim" and individual app store pages.
• Anywhere marked "inference" is inference; revenue and paying-user numbers are not public.