Cuéntamelo Cantando

The problem

Cuéntamelo Cantando had already proven something real: a contest format for Latin singer-songwriters that generated 1.2M YouTube views, 14K new subscribers, and an audience that kept coming back. The problem wasn’t traction — it was infrastructure. The community had no place to live between editions. Artists had no owned profile. Fans had no way to connect directly. And the commercial case for sponsors was hard to make when the only asset was a YouTube channel the team didn’t fully control.

The approach

Before touching the product, we worked on structure. Cuéntamelo Cantando and Mantra Media Network are separate companies with related missions — a community and contest on one side, artist services on the other. Keeping them editorially and commercially separate was the first decision, and it set the bar for everything after: the platform has to be worth joining for artists who never want a deal with Mantra, and worth following for fans who don’t care who gets signed.

From there we defined what the platform actually needed to do: give artists a permanent home for their catalog, not just their contest submission; give fans a place to follow and support them year-round; and give the editorial team a content and community surface they own. The contest becomes one activity inside a larger ecosystem, not the only reason to show up.

Product architecture followed strategy. We scoped what to build, what to extend, and what to defer — so the team builds toward a clear model rather than accumulating features.

Outcome

A platform in active development, already running on the real Perú roster. Artists have hubs they manage themselves; fans follow and get a year-round feed; the contest runs inside it as phases — applications, public voting, jury scoring, admin review — rather than as the whole product. The commercial structure gives sponsors something concrete to buy: year-round visibility with the contest as the tentpole, not a single media placement. The creative work the team was already doing now has a foundation built to hold it.

How we worked

Strategic advisory on entity structure, product definition, and go-to-market positioning; product architecture and data modeling; ongoing build partnership across active development sessions. This is a live engagement — the platform ships alongside the editorial calendar.