Tell My Friends Wants Music Fans to Profit From Sharing Legal MP3s

Tell My Friends recently at SXSW.

Singapore-based Tell My Friends is one of the more established young tech companies on our newest Startup Asia roster having been in beta for nearly a year. It’s a social music store for legal MP3s where users can actual earn money from referral sales of songs that you post as links to places like Facebook.

For example, if you share one of Tell My Friends’ licensed songs on Facebook, you will get S$0.21 from each purchase that results from clicking on your custom link. That could add up to a profit on the song that you yourself bought. Songs generally cost S$2, which is a bit pricier than from Apple’s iTunes Music Store, but this service brings profit-making potential for music fans. As shown in Tell My Friends’ startup pitch this afternoon, this is the revenue share:

Since my colleague looked at Tell My Friends last July, the startup has been, CEO Ben Looi tells us, focusing on content acquisition and improving its user experience ahead of a solid launch soon. Ben has also been traveling around, becoming the first Singapore Startup to get invited to pitch at Seed Forum New York last November, and more recently back in the States to exhibit as part of IDA’s Singapore Alley at the SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas.

Now Ben’s back in his native Singapore, and pitching to our knowledgable but very picky judges. We know that the startup is in talks with some labels and content providers about adding more music, but the judges will surely be wary about the significant costs involved in such a venture. Plus, as mature a market as Singapore is, some of its netizens still find that music piracy – or finding some clever way to listen to overseas services like Spotify – is more convenient for them.

As for funding, Ben explains:

We are working with Mercatus Capital to raise US$500,000, and have received a bridging amount as a convertible loan while the fund-raising is taking place.

Of that funding, they anticipate that a whopping $300,000 needs to be spent on marketing, with $50,000 for licensing content.

The panel of four judges is worried about legality as this is a sort of pyramid-like monetizing program. Ben says it’s legal in Singapore. The focus for the startup will be Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. He says there are just over 600 downloaders who’ve made use of the service so far.