Shrestha is a co-founder of Daami Music, a concept, digitalising Nepali music. He conceptualised it when he was 28 and turned it into a reality at the age of 33 with Rajkumar Shrestha and Sudeep Pokhrel, the two other co-founders.

Daami Music is a Nepali song streaming mobile app, where listeners can stream songs, online and can also subscribe to listen, offline.

Daami Music started its operations nearly a year ago and got officially launched four months ago.

According to Shrestha, Daami Music app has currently more than 20,000 songs, in different languages and genres and plans to add another 15,000 songs after the company has tie-ups with some of the biggest music distributors.

Daami Music has nearly 12,000 active daily listeners and more than 1,000 new subscribers are being added every month with its popularity picking up.

Customer can enjoy high-quality audio, if they take subscription packages. The company offers daily, weekly and monthly packages. The daily package cost Rs3, weekly Rs15 and monthly Rs50, plus VAT. The customer also can download songs to listen offline on subscription packages. However, the songs will be auto erased once the subscription validation expires.

“Weekly packages are the most preferred package,” said Shrestha.

A native of Kathmandu, after completing his higher secondary, Shrestha joined music classes and completed a three-year course from Kala Nidhi Sangeet Bidhyalaya, which is affiliated to Allahabad Board since 2008. He ran a music-related magazine for six years, and continued to pursue his singing career.

Then, the thought of digitalsing Nepali music occured to Shrestha. “As the era of audio cassettes and CD players had already come to an end, Nepali music was in dire need of a digital platform.”

Working with Yonder Music as a freelancer for a few months back in 2017, helped Shrestha gain knowledge about the music business. “I got the opportunity to learn how to commercially stream the audio music,” he said.

Shrestha started off with a Rs2.5 million seed capital to make the app. “Since, I also belong to the music industry and we are a start-up company, we are getting support from many artists who are helping in making the content available.”

Shrestha is confident of growth in his business as he says people used to buy a cassette at Rs260-rs275, but now by just paying Rs50 one-time, they will have access to thousands of Nepali songs in various categories and languages. “The number of listeners has increased now and we remain hopeful about the sustainability of the business,” he said.

Daami Music wants to go in an aggressive marketing campaign as Shrestha and his team is in financial need. The company is also preparing for karaoke feature through the same app. “Once we become economically sound, we will also partner with international music distributors for the audio content,” said Shrestha.

Daami Music also has its own radio features in the app and plans to run programmes through it, especially podcasts.

Shrestha said that most of the app users outside the country stream songs offline by downloading through subscription packages. Nepalese residing in India, Australia, the US, and Gulf countries are also using the app, he added.

The Daami Music app can be downloaded via both android and iOS operators. Shrestha claims that the app is user-friendly and one can easily subscribe to its music with easy e-payment options. “People are able to listen to unheard songs of well-known artists, whenever and wherever they want,” he said.

Most songs currently played on Daami Music app, include pop songs of the 90s and classic Nepali film songs.