Irish start-up Minm provides an alternative streaming music model
Luke Lau and Daniel Cosgrove, co-founders of Irish streaming service Minm.
While streaming giants like Spotify aren’t going away any time soon - even in the wake of the furore around the Joe Rogan podcast, and long-standing questions on fair payments for artists - some listeners are looking for new ways to enjoy music.
Belfast-based streaming start-up Minm hope to provide one. Emerging late last year, the service is based on the user-centric payment model, where subscription fees are split evenly among artists, depending on a user’s listening habits.
“It would make sense when viewed in the context of the lockdowns, gigs were completely cancelled,” says co-founder Daniel Cosgrove. “And I guess that's sort of where the idea came into our heads. We were looking at artists that we admired and we knew were doing pretty well when gigs were around. We saw them starting GoFundMe campaigns, them having to move back in with their parents and stuff like that.”
Cosgrove says he found it strange, that musicians were having such a difficult time funding themselves when they seemed to be getting plenty streams across the various services.
One of the biggest things for any streaming service or online product is what the user sees first - its layout and interface. Being able to access a favourite artist, curate a personal library and discover new music is all-important - and a tall order if you’re starting from the ground up.
Cosgrove and his co-founder Luke Lau would draw what they felt the interface should look like, and bring that into a digital design tool called Sketch. “From then, we code it up, and it's very back and forth,” says Lau. “We have loads of features that we know we want to add, but it's trying to work out what those features should look like.
“We want to add playlisting soon, but what does the creation menu look like? You're writing bullet points as to what you should be able to do, and working from there.”
A big draw to Minm for its admittedly small audience and roster of artists so far is the model it proposes. Instead of taking your money and averaging it out among the big names, Minm looks at your monthly listens and distributes your monthly fee to Irish artists accordingly - with 90% of all money going directly to artists.
Lau explains: “When we started, we didn't know it was called the user-centric model. We said, 'oh, what if the way streaming worked was that your subscription just went directly to the artists?' We were like, 'oh, that's a great idea, of course, it should work like that'.
“We coded it up, did some research. It turns out [streaming service] Tidal has actually been advocating for this thing for a while. It was just one of those things that seemed so obvious this should be the way that streaming works.” One of the attractions for punters is the report they get at the end of every month.
“It's like your Spotify Wrapped for the month, where you can see where your money has gone to,” says Cosgrove, “but we can calculate from that how much artists have gotten per stream, versus Spotify, and it is similar to what we estimated it would be - 10 to 20 times more - which is great to see.”
The idea has an immediate appeal to many in Irish music, as the inequities of the streaming model have compounded the pressures of running a band or label. One such convert is Eddie Kiely, of Cork independent label FIFA Records, whose whole roster of acts has been moved onto Minm, and for whom the platform will be part of future release strategies.
“In terms of receipts, and it being a start-up, considering the amount of users and plays, they're a lot more substantial,” says Kiely. “The useability and interaction, that has to build, and I know that that's going to get better as it goes, but already you can see more fairness to the independent artists."
For now, the few hundred independent artists on the service include comedian ‘Sir Stevo’ Timothy, veteran Cork band Emperor of Ice Cream, and emerging Cork electronic musician Blakkheart.
“If people can be a bit patient and get in early... like, you're not going to go in and find everybody you want to listen to [at the outset], but if you're a follower of Irish independent bands, it could be really useful. You'll probably never get rid of Spotify, but it's great to have an alternative.”
- Minm is available now for €5 a month. See more at minm.co
