This music startup in Vietnam quietly garnered 700 million downloads worldwide

The February issue of Forbes Vietnam always garners a lot of attention in the country with its annual 30 Under 30 roster. This year, one name stood out: Nguyen Tuan Cuong, co-founder of Amanotes.

Unlike some of the stars highlighted by Forbes, Cuong and his company have stayed out of the limelight until now.

Amanotes co-founder and chief product officer Cuong Nguyen / Photo credit: Amanotes

Amanotes was founded in 2015 by Cuong alongside CEO and co-founder Vo Tuan Binh. It is now a fast-growing music tech startup based in Ho Chi Minh City, known chiefly among players of hyper casual mobile music games.

Even though the company is low-key, App Annie last year ranked it as one of the top 20 publishers of mobile apps across all categories, sitting alongside tech giants Facebook and Bytedance. SensorTower also placed Amanotes among the top 20 app developers in the world, with the highest number of downloads in 2019.

Its flagship product, Magic Tiles 3, simulates piano, guitar, and drum playing set to popular songs. It has been downloaded 275 million times since launching in 2016.

Meeting of minds

In 2012, the two co-founders met for the first time through a post in Launch, an informal Facebook group for everything related to Vietnam’s tech and entrepreneurship network.

Cuong, a recent graduate of Foreign Trade University then, was looking for a job at a startup. Binh previously founded a music game startup called MusicKing, but it went belly up in 2009. Having played the piano, Vietnamese bamboo flute, and guitar, but also coming from a technical background, Binh wanted to embark on a new project that combines music and technology.

The two hit it off.

Cuong was drawn to the vision of building a startup that focuses on interactive music games. The two co-founders started doing research and exploring new concepts.

During the company’s early days, Amanotes was primarily self-funded. The team held off the process of seeking external funding by maintaining a small revenue stream from building websites for other Vietnamese companies.

The magical success of Magic Tiles 3

Magic Tiles 3 was inspired by the success of Piano Tiles, released in 2014 and developed by Chinese creator Hu Wen Zeng. Cuong recalls that Hu’s game was so popular that many other developers cloned his game and released them with tweaks of their own.

The team at Amanotes like the format of Piano Tiles, but saw an opportunity to build something different.

“We want to enable users, even those without any musical background, to play a full composition,” Cuong said. “Therefore, we focus on making the music come as alive as possible.”

“Everyone can music”

Global ambitions