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Music startup YUME rewards listeners, backs struggling Filipino artists
Members of the music streaming platform YUME earn an average of $70 to $300 a month just from listening to music, says YUME President Johann Bontuyan
CEBU, Philippines – For Cebuano musician Johann Bontuyan, struggling artists shouldn’t have to give up on their dreams to live a good life.
Bontuyan has been in the recording arts industry for more than two decades and owns the House of Indies Recording Studio in Cebu City. The musician told Rappler on Friday, November 29, that he has seen way too many artists shelve their talents when faced with economic challenges.
“A lot of times, the artists end up getting married, have kids, and they stop with the music because they have to go get day jobs. We want to support the artists so they can continue to be artists,” Bontuyan said.
Data from the Department of Science and Technology-National Research Council of the Philippines (DOST-NCRP) national music stakeholders’ survey show that more than 50% of Filipinos employed in the music industry earn less than P20,000 a month.
To address this problem, Bontuyan and his team of fellow musicians conceptualized a platform that would ensure artists would have an active community of listeners and even publish their music with zero upfront costs.
Their idea, which was born inside a Cebu-based café, culminated into the music discovery startup known as YUME, which means “dream” in Japanese. Bontuyan now leads the team as president of the company.
Listeners matter
YUME’s Chief Visionary Officer Jason Purino explained that unlike other music platforms, the company’s unique rewards system incentivizes users to listen to songs instead of just doing so passively.
On their virtual platform, listeners can enjoy a rewards system that lets them redeem points for cash just by listening to songs.
“Without the listeners, we feel that there’s no music industry to begin with,” Purino told Rappler.
The goal, the chief visionary officer added, is to build a community of listeners that are rewarded for supporting artists. For every stream, artists are guaranteed income through royalties.
“The way we make money is by doing our job correctly. Once the artists are generating revenue from royalties, from concerts, from e-commerce, selling merchandise, this and that, then that’s when we make money,” Purino said.
A universal experience
Both Bontuyan and Purino know what it’s like for budding artists to sacrifice so much just to get one song out.
Purino has been helping promote and produce for artists in the Philippines and abroad for the past 27 years. Before this, he was the lead singer for a local band in New Jersey, United States.
“As a Filipino musician in America, especially those years, there’s a lot of doors that will be shut in front of you. There’s a lot of words that you will hear because of [how you look] — a lot of doubt,” he told Rappler.
In their early days, Purino had to invite Bontuyan, their other partners, and bandmates just to reach a quota set by managers in bars and event spaces. Eventually, they were able to grow their community through online forums and concerts they contributed to.
It was at that point that their team realized they could leverage their connections with bands into something that would help other artists.
“A lot of artists are facing a lot of struggles, trying to break the glass-ceiling, trying to be found,” YUME Chief Technology Officer Anthony Yap said.
Yap explained that they are reaching out to artists to help them penetrate the global market. With their team, they emphasized, artists do not have to pay for recording, mixing, mastering, production, publishing, and distributing of their songs.
“We know from hands-on experience that, hey, that feeling sucks. We don’t want that feeling anymore,” Purino added.
Recently, their team signed with Cebuana artist Dimple Recla. Through a collaboration with the Department of Trade and Industry, they were able to showcase the local artist’s talents at the National Music Haraya 2024 in Manila.
Making it work
On the platform, users can either get a free account or a premium membership. With the free account, one can listen to music from local talents much like other streaming platforms.
If a user gets a premium account, which has a one-time membership fee of $20 or around P1,172.03, users can earn income from streaming songs.
Since their soft launch in January, the company has published around 200 songs from various artists and has more than 3,000 listener-members from 65 countries.
“We have data for two quarters of the year and in that data, our members are getting an average of $70 to $300 a month just from listening to music so we know it works,” Bontuyan told Rappler.
By the first quarter of 2025, the team shared that they plan to launch their smartphone app in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. – Rappler.com
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