nkoda: Digital is about to reinvent sheet music

Premium Corporate Member, nkoda discuss how digital is reinventing access to sheet music, and offer an exclusive discount to Making Music members. 

How did a 19-year-old aspiring composer turn the music publishing industry upside down? 

nkoda, founded by Lorenzo Brewer, brought the Netflix/Spotify model of all the content on a monthly subscription to sheet music – 30 million pages to be searched, played, marked up and shared with other musicians.

What is nkoda?

Lorenzo was frustrated that he was spending hundreds of pounds a month going to dodgy sheet music sites or worse not finding the music he needed. When he finally found score he could not bring himself to mark up these expensive works. 

Through a family connection, Lorenzo made two critical introductions: John Minch, the head of Boosey & Hawkes; and Sundar Venkitachalam, who would subsequently become nkoda’s chief technology officer. At first the former expressed publisher’s reticence to go digital, citing piracy and quality of rendering, but the latter ingeniously resolved all publisher technical obstacles. 

Today nkoda has licensed the complete sales, rental and educational catalogues of 90 leading publishers (including Bärenreiter, Boosey & Hawkes, Breitkopf, Chester, Novello and Ricordi) making the app the sixth largest on Apple’s app store with users in over 150 countries. 

I wanted to provide an unbroken discovery of music for everyone, granting immediate access to any style or genre, for any instrument or musical need. - Lorenzo Brewer, Founder & CEO

nkoda is changing lives including that of champions such as acclaimed mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato who is preparing a Schubert Winterreise series using nkoda, legendary conductor Sir Simon Rattle who described nkoda as “a view into the future of making music,” and composing phenomenon Ludovico Einaudi who released his latest project, Seven Days Walking, on nkoda.

Making Music members can claim an exclusive 20% discounted price of £7.99/month or £79.99/year. nkoda is available on seven devices including iPad, iPhone, macOS, Android (phones and tablets) and Windows (PCs and Tablets).