Tehnopol Startup Incubator’s startup Fairmus is creating an Estonian equivalent to large music streaming platforms

Musician Reigo Ahven is one of the founders of Fairmus that is creating an Estonian music streaming platform. Reigo entered the world of startups in autumn 2020 and he says that this journey has been very exciting and has taught him a lot. Fairmus is currently participating in Tehnopol Startup Incubator’s growth programme.

What is Fairmus and what kind of problem does it solve?

“Fairmus is a fair and transparent music streaming platform. Streaming is a great way to enjoy music, but for instance Spotify’s business model is built so that all the money from all the users goes into one big pot and this is then divided based on the amount of listening. This means that a very small portion of music rights’ owners get some profit, the rest of the artists do not even earn back their recording costs. This is a very big problem and it became especially hard in spring of 2020. We decided to build the first music streaming platform that is 100% user-centric – the monthly fee of every listener is divided among those artists whose music they have listened,” explained Reigo.

He added that the feedback from both the users and the artists has been very positive. “From the artists’ point of view, it is very simple – we have heard from Estonia and from abroad that finally someone is trying to solve all the problems that have arisen during the last 15 years in different streaming platforms.”

What are Fairmus’ plans in near future?

“We are currently in MVP phase with our product and we are trying to make sure that we have legally covered all necessary things in our domestic market, so that we would be prepared for international scaling,” said Reigo and added that there has already been a lot of interest towards Farimus in Germany, Finland, Ireland, UK and Iceland.

One of their aims is to open the platform to the users so that each artist could upload their music and keep an eye on their profit. This is just like writing a tweet in Twitter – the process is as simple. “I am glad to announce that this solution became public in December and artists have uploaded their music on their own. Previously we were the ones uploading the music, but now they have more independence,” said Reigo.

During the next ten months, Fairmus plans to attract investments in the sum of 250 000 euros to develop the music uploading platform and improve their mobile app so that it could be compared with Spotify, Deezer and Tidal. “One possibility which our users are waiting for and which we are planning to add is that you could download your playlist from the app and listen to it regardless of whether you have an internet connection or not. This possibility costs a lot to develop but our user surveys have shown that people would like to have this option,” he said. In addition, they are planning to recruit more people to their team and test foreign markets, starting from Finland and other Scandinavian countries.

They have also interesting collaborations going on. For instance, Fairmus bought the right to use Netiraadio’s catalogue for three years. “This includes about 30 000 songs with meta data. This will surely bring a large number of Estonian music to our platform,” said Reigo. They also recently signed a collaboration contract with Estonian Public Broadcasting – the music at EPB’s archive will be digitalized and added to Fairmus. Thus, more than 100 000 songs that were previously very hard to get, will soon be available from Fairmus.

Why join Tehnopol Startup Incubator?

In Reigo’s opinion, Tehnopol Startup Incubator is like an elevator. “This elevator might not take you to the 60^th floor immediately, but it will take you to the 10^th or 15^th floor where the view is already very different,” he said.

His own expectations very fairly simple: “I just wanted to get access to the so-called brains. I wanted to be a part of this world, be in the inner circle, and no matter how I looked at it, it seemed that joining the Startup Incubator is the fastest way to do so.”

Reigo knew that the incubator has a number of experts and he was certain that all his questions will get answers. “To me, one of the most important people has been Ivar Siimar. He has, in a very supportive manner, given us feedback about what investors find important. If you can fulfil the expectations of one investor, then in a way you are fulfilling the expectations of all investors. In order to do so, you need someone who will give you advice and we have found that person at Tehnopol Startup Incubator,” said Reigo in conclusion.

You can download and get acquainted with Fairmus’ mobile app for free. You can listen to the music for free for the first 33 minutes and if you decide to pay the monthly fee of 2.99 euros, these 33 minutes that you have already listened, will be calculated into the first month’s fee so no artist will remain without their fair share.