Terms of Use

Thank you for using Minm. This page contains the terms of use for artists, labels and listeners using the site. Whilst we're aware it's not the most exciting thing in the world, please read it before using Minm. We've tried to keep it as succinct as possible: it may be of interest to you if you are an artist wondering about how the rights and royalties to your music work.

Please reach out to us if you have any questions.

In summary

For artists

You must own the rights to everything you upload. This includes both the rights to the recording and to the song.

For cover songs you must have permission from the rights holder. This may be the original songwriter themselves or a publisher.

If you are signed to a label, there's a good chance that they own the rights to your music so you should check with them first.

Minm does not take control of any rights to your music, we are just given license to use it for streaming whenever you upload it.

For listeners

We don't sell or share your data with any third parties. Read more about this in the privacy policy.

What's the difference between the recording and song copyrights?

Before recorded music, songwriters composed sheet music and had it published, where it could then be performed live by orchestras and other performing artists. There was one piece of creative work involved, the song, and so one copyright that you could own.

But then with advent of the phonogram, it became possible to record performed music. Now there was a second piece of creative work, also with its own copyright: the recording.

For example, Johnny Cash famously recorded a cover of the hit song Hurt, which was originally written by Nine Inch Nails. Johnny Cash owns the recording copyright of the cover, and Nine Inch Nails owns the song copyright.

If you are an independent artist who writes their own music, it is likely that you own both sets of rights to your music, unless you had co-writers or a dedicated songwriter, in which they may own the song copyright too.

Definitions

Minm refers to the company nuvest labs, inc.
The Service refers to the website minm.co and any other software offered by Minm.
Music refers to sound recordings uploaded by Artists to the Service.
Artist refers to individual recording artists (a solo artist), collections of recording artists (including, but not limited to, a band), or companies, entities or organizations (including, but not limited to, a recording label)

By using the Service, you agree to the terms of use below.

Intellectual property rights

Artists can upload Music to the Service. Although Minm does not take any ownership rights from the uploaded Music, Minm needs license to be able to do things like host and share the Music on the Service. Artists uploading Music to the Service grant Minm the royalty-free license to:

reproduce,
distribute,
publicly perform,
communicate, and
make available

the Music as well as any copyrightable works or metadata associated with the Music, including but not limited to album artwork.

What are copyright controls?

Controls are the various ways in which a copyrighted piece of content can be exploited.

The reproduction control is exploited whenever you produce copies of a copyrighted work, and the distribution control is exploited when giving those copies out to the public.

The public performance control is exploited whenever a work is performed or displayed in public, i.e. anywhere outside of your home or your car.

The communication control is exploiited by broadcasting the work to the general public, for example on radio. But whenever it is broadcast digitally or on demand, this is sometimes referred to as the making available control, which is what most streaming services exploit today.

As a copyright owner, you reserve the exclusive rights to exploit each of these controls. So in order for someone else to be able to exploit them, i.e. for Minm to be able to stream your music to the public, these controls need to be licensed to them.

By uploading Music to the Service, you must own the full rights to the uploaded Music, or have been licensed by the owner of the uploaded Music. This includes the copyright to both the recording as well as the song.

If you are in an agreement with any performing rights organisation (PRO) or music publisher, you must inform them of your grant of a royalty free license to Minm for the public performance, communication and making available of your Music.

Subscriptions

You may subscribe to listen to Music through the Service. You will be automatically charged at the beginning of each billing period, unless you cancel your subscription. After cancelling, you will still have access to Music through the Service until the billing period ends.

Payment to Artists

Minm will pay Artists whose Music has been listened to on the Service. It is distributed based on a user-centric royalty system, and as such there is no fixed royalty per play. Instead, the net revenue from each user's subscription will be distributed amongst the Artists that the user listened to that billing period, minus any payment processing fees, a share that Minm receives, and any other fees for licensing that may be required.

Acceptable content

Minm reserves the right to remove any content (including, but not limited to, Music) uploaded to the website at any time. We will typically only do this if the content is discriminatory or offensive, but it is up to Minm's sole discretion.

Termination

Likewise, Minm reserves the right to terminate your access to the Service at any time. If you wish to close your account, please reach out to us: no hard feelings, we just don't have a button that lets you close it just yet.

Changes to these terms

Minm reserves the right to change or amend the terms of use at any time.

These terms were last updated on the 27th of January, 2022.