What is Tipino?

What is Tipino?

Music has never been easier to find. A song recorded in a bedroom in Nairobi or a basement in Bratislava can land in your headphones before you’ve had time to wonder where it came from. Old records, forgotten records, weird records… they’re all suddenly available for everyone.

That’s genuinely great. But something got strange along the way.

Being available everywhere stopped meaning being able to connect directly. A song can be played, saved, shared, added to a hundred playlists, and still earn its creator almost nothing. Not because the people listening don’t care. Most of them do. They have favourite songs. Favourite bands. Records that carried them through bad weeks, long nights, first loves, ugly breakups, stupid jobs, better jobs, and most of the other little pleasures and disasters that make up a life.

But caring about music and actually supporting the people who make it stopped being the same thing. Somewhere between streaming, social media, algorithms, subscriptions, free tiers, old contracts, new platforms, and very tired attention spans, that link got stretched thin.

That’s what Tipino is trying to fix.

Sam and Stephan are both musicians, which means they’d been having versions of the same conversation for years. How do you get heard? How do you reach the right people? How do you earn enough to make the next recording, the next album? To just keep going without turning every waking hour into promotion? Some of their ideas were about marketing. Some were probably too weird, too expensive, or too dependent on luck and caffeine.

Then Sam came up with the idea that became Tipino: what if fans could keep listening exactly as they do now, but add a small monthly subscription that goes to the artists behind that listening? Not charity. Not guilt. Just a way to say: “I listen to this, I want it to keep existing.”

The first version was rough. These things usually are. But it worked well enough to show the idea had legs. And it could actually work.

Originally the plan was to build Tipino around Spotify. Most people use it, it was technically the fastest route. Then Spotify changed how its API works, and that changed things for Tipino too. But honestly, it forced an even better idea. If Tipino only worked with one platform, it would always be the wrong platform for someone. So we opened it up. You can connect supported music services, use listening data where it’s available, import artists from playlists, or just pick artists yourself. You can support artists even if you don’t stream at all.

Tipino isn’t another streaming service or tries to replace how you listen to music. It sits on top of your existing music life. You pick a monthly amount, and Tipino distributes it to artists you actually listen to. Or you hand pick them yourself. YOU stay in control. And that way, YOU decide who will get your support.

It won’t fix the music industry. That’s a bigger problem than one platform can solve. But Tipino can close one specific gap: between the music people love and the artists who need just enough support to keep making it.