Client: What Can I Sing, a karaoke venue platform based in Australia
Engagement: 2020 to today (ongoing)
What we did: iOS and Android apps, backend, web admin, ongoing maintenance and features
Live at: whatcanising.com, the App Store and Google Play
The situation
What Can I Sing had a product before they had us. Another developer built it in 2018, and by 2020 the relationship had broken down. The problem wasn't missing features. It was responsiveness.
In the client's own words:
"I had a different developer build my original product in 2018. We experienced some challenges and I started having problems with their service and response."
— Keith Windle, What Can I Sing
Meanwhile the problem the product existed to solve was still there. Karaoke hosts were running their nights on paper: printed songbooks, handwritten request slips, singers squinting in the dark, and hosts working through illegible piles of paper with no reliable way to manage the rotation.
What we built
We rebuilt the platform end to end: two consumer mobile apps and a web admin system.
Singer app (iOS and Android)
- A map of nearby subscribed venues, based on the singer's location
- Venue details on tap: host, show times, images and directions
- A full digital songbook with fuzzy search by title or artist
- Favourites lists with custom ordering
- Key-change requests sent along with the song
- Request history, missing-song requests and multi-language support
- In-app tipping for hosts
Host app (iOS and Android)
- A real-time request queue with one-tap approve and decline
- Automatic rotation management, so no singer gets skipped
- Notifications to singers when their turn arrives
- "Buzz the Crowd" broadcast messages
- Auto-approval rules, duplicate-request prevention and configurable queue limits
- Karaoke Roulette, Kiosk Mode and random prize draws
- In-app advertising slots that earn venues extra revenue
Web admin
- Venue and subscription management
- Songbook catalogue upload and maintenance
- Host account administration and super-admin controls
Stack: Flutter (iOS and Android), a Java backend, real-time request sync, Stripe payments, geolocation and maps, push notifications, and CI/CD pipelines.
The outcome
The platform is live on the App Store and Google Play and in nightly use at venues across Australia, the US and the UK, including hosts who run several shows a week across more than one venue.
Here's what hosts say publicly:
"Proper song request management! No more piles of incomprehensible and incomplete slips to read in the dark... No more paper song lists to maintain! Realtime requests for missing songs! Karaoke Roulette! Kiosk Mode!"
— Dean Carlton, karaoke host
"I run Karaoke 6 nights a week with 8 shows in three different venues and I could not imagine going back to the old paper and pen."
— Ronnie Friend, karaoke host and DJ
"Best bit of karaoke request software out there for host & clients. Once it's setup you'll not go back!"
— Stu Edwards, karaoke host
And the outcome that matters most commercially: the client stayed. We've maintained and extended the product continuously since 2020, six years without the work ever going back out to tender.
"He re-built our host and singer apps along with the backend. We have kept him on with maintenance and improvement to this day. He's easy to deal with, quick to respond, and he tells me straight when something isn't worth doing. When I give him an idea for a new feature, he will go above and beyond to tell me what else can be done or ways to make the idea even better. Six years in and I've never had to go looking for anyone else."
— Keith Windle, What Can I Sing
Why this engagement lasted when the first one didn't
The first developer built the product too. What made the difference this time wasn't mainly technical.
- Responsiveness. The reason the previous relationship failed was service and response. We work in the client's Slack every day and reply in hours, not days.
- Honest scoping. We tell the client when an idea isn't worth building. That costs some revenue in the short term and buys trust that lasts years.
- Adding to the product, not just closing tickets. When the client brings a feature idea, we come back with what else it could do. Keith brought this up himself as the thing that sets the work apart.
- Continuity. The same team has looked after the codebase since 2020, so nothing gets re-learned and nothing gets lost between pieces of work.
What this shows
- Product rescue: taking over a codebase from a developer who's gone, and making it stable.
- Cross-platform mobile with real users: two live apps in two stores, used every night.
- Payments and real-time systems: Stripe, live request sync and push notifications.
- Long-term ownership: six years of maintenance, not a build that was handed over and forgotten.
- Client retention: the strongest signal a services business can show.
Is your developer going slow or quiet?
If you have a live product and the people who built it have stopped answering, that's the situation we walked into with What Can I Sing. We've spent 13 years building and running mobile apps, backends and cloud infrastructure, across 40+ projects. We can take your product over, tell you plainly what state it's in, and keep it running.