AI for music is an exciting topic, and we devoted a feature to it in the latest issue of ActuIA, currently on sale in digital and paper versions, available at newsstands and by subscription(https://boutique.actuia.com). SoundCloud, a music streaming platform, announced in early May that it had acquired Musiio, a music technology start-up that uses AI to automatically identify and tag songs. The acquisition will allow SoundCloud to strengthen its AI capabilities and further leverage its vast data to identify upcoming music trends and talent.

SoundCloud, a curation platform founded in Stockholm by sound designer Alex Ljung and musician Eric Wahlforss, moved to Berlin in August 2007. It claims to be the world’s largest music discovery platform and has more than 300 million pieces of content from 30 million artists, distributed in 190 countries. In 2020, it raised $75 million from SiriusXM. The acquisition of Musiio will allow the company to unearth the talent of tomorrow hidden on its platform.

Musiio

Singapore-based Musiio, founded in June 2018 by British Hazel Savage and Swedish Aron Pettersson, was recently named one of the most innovative music companies by Fast Company. Launched as a solution for audio platforms looking to efficiently categorize and tag large volumes of tracks and lacking the in-house resources to do so, Musiio is able to sort by qualifiers (genre, key, tempo and mood).

The AI uses a combination of deep learning and feature extraction, the training is focused on the audio itself, rather than statistics and third-party data, which some services use to categorize tracks. Musiio’s technology focuses on B2B audio reference retrieval (AI that can “listen” to music), automated tagging, and playlist tools for the music industry. By “listening” to more tracks than a human could ever do and identifying characteristics and patterns, AI allows users to better predict success, which in turn can increase their success rate and ultimately revenue.

Hazel Savage, Musiio’s CEO, and Aron Pettersson, the CTO, will remain at the helm of the company as Vice President, Music Intelligence, and Vice President, AI and Machine Learning, respectively. Their employees will join SoundCloud’s teams and will also retain their positions.

Hazel Savage states:

“SoundCloud is not only a legendary household name, but also an artist-focused company that I believe is the future of the new holistic music industry. I’m incredibly proud that after four years of building Musiio, we are now part of SoundCloud.”

Musiio will continue to operate as a B2B company, serving its existing customers and open to new customers for Tag and Search AI products. It will be at the heart of SoundCloud’s discovery experience by helping it identify talent and trends before anyone else.

Eliah Seton, president of SoundCloud, enthuses:

“SoundCloud hosts more music from more creators than any platform on the planet. The acquisition of Musiio accelerates our strategy to better understand how this music is evolving in a proprietary way that is critical to our success. We are honored to partner with Hazel and Aron and welcome Musiio’s absolutely brilliant team of innovators to the SoundCloud family.”

Translated from IA et Musique : Soundcloud, plateforme de streaming audio musicale, annonce l’acquisition de Musiio