Mome Entertainment Revitalizes the Live Music Scene
Mome Entertainment, Inc. is on a mission to revamp the live music scene by facilitating shows in intimate, unexpected settings. Mome, which joined Rev: Ithaca Startup Works in 2021, connects musicians and passionate listeners with unique, community-based venues around the world. The startup calls its events “momEnts”, emphasizing their ability to unite artists, listeners, and venue hosts.
We recently spoke to founder and CEO Jonathan Meyerhoff about Mome’s origin and aspirations.
What is the “origin story” behind your company?
I thought of the idea in 2012 when I was attending and playing at Ithaca’s Porchfest. It is such a festive and beautiful event, and I asked myself, “Why can’t we have something like this every weekend?!” Music around every corner, community gathering and enjoying each other, celebratory vibe, and so on. I reserved the domain houseconcertfinder.com as a placeholder for my business idea and let it percolate over almost ten years.
Fast forward to 2020 – COVID hits, and the live music industry tanks. Many music venues shut down completely. After running my digital marketing and design company for 14 years, I was ready to move on, so I went to Culebra, Puerto Rico for a three-week soul search. While there I met some fellow music lovers. One ran a music school in town, and we spent a lot of time looking for places to play music together. My decision was made — launch Mome!
What customer need is your company attempting to address?
Mome Entertainment is addressing the lack of venues for smaller, local artists and the lack of money to support them. It also addresses the need for us humans to connect with each other in person, and what better way to do that than by sharing the enjoyment of the universal language of music.
A venue member curated event is called a momeEnt! With Mome, users can host, play or listen a momeEnt!
Do you have any recent company milestones or accomplishments you would like to share?
Mome has just finished creating its logo and basic brand, a sign up website at www.mome.live and is currently working on a WordPress-based minimum viable product to soft launch late summer/early fall 2022. In tandem, we are working on building a streaming and social platform to support the live performances.
Where do you envision your company a year from now? Five years from now?
A year from now we will have built a strong proof of concept, be running shows in 25–30 states within the United States, and have garnered a first round of funding to build the platform from scratch.
Five years from now, Mome will be global and have millions of listeners going to shows. The Mome Social and streaming side of the business will be full tilt and will be rivaling YouTube and Facebook streaming platforms with traffic and engagement. Mome will also be curating larger, national act events with 200–1000 participants. Mome is beginning to be a household name. Mome…a home for music everywhere!