Aug22499 14 | Acquisition International, Issue 5 2024 Mar24343 Musiio by SoundCloud: Descriptive Artificial Intelligence for Music n 2018, Musiio was established by Co-Founders Hazel Savage and Aron Pettersson, who set out to combine industry-leading AI technology with specialist music knowledge to solve a range of problems facing catalogue owners. The result of their hard work was a product that could “listen’’ to music and use the audio file itself to create new and accurate data. It not only automated tagging but also enhanced music search capabilities and facilitated the creation of highly detailed music analysis and reports. Musiio’s most popular product is Musiio Tag, which automatically tags music with useful metadata like energy, tempo, genre, mood, and more. With this product, catalogue navigation becomes simpler, playlists become easier to curate, and professionals can efficiently seek specific types of music that meet their needs . This technology has now been used to tag over 500 million tracks. Anyone interested in Musiio Tag can try a demo for free at tag.musiio. com, no sign up required. Since the very beginning, Musiio has been committed to ethical AI development, setting itself apart through its belief that AI should not be used to “solve” music creation but rather to address the challenges artists face when it comes to discovery. Music AI can be broken down into two core categories: generative and descriptive. While generative AI is used to create music, raising a number of ethical concerns, descriptive AI is an assistive technology that extracts complex metadata with high accuracy, performing tasks that no human would be able to do. Musiio fits into the descriptive category, striving to help people in the music industry rather than replace them. Musiio has been a huge hit in the music industry, gaining the attention of customers like Sony, Downtown Music Publishing, and Epidemic Sound. Its incredible work has been recognised by industry-leading publications such as Billboard, MusicWeek, and Music Business Worldwide. In April 2022, the company was acquired by renowned streaming company SoundCloud, which was keen to enhance its music discovery, recommendation, and playlisting capabilities to benefit the millions of musicians uploading music to its platform. Since then, Musiio has operated as a wholly owned subsidiary of SoundCloud, continuing to develop music tagging and search solutions. In this, the company has adopted a strategic approach that enables it to fulfil the SoundCloud mission, which is to “lead what’s next in music”. Its revolutionary technology has transformed the music streaming landscape, addressing the unique set of challenges faced by streaming services. For example, Musiio has helped to tackle the “zero plays” problem, referring to the fact that a significant portion of uploaded tracks go unheard. Through a solution called First Fans, any newly uploaded track can be tagged and presented to the 100 listeners who are most likely to enjoy it based on their listening habits. Now, Musiio is proud to be an industry leader in contextual audiobased metadata, serving a broad clientele of over 70 big name record labels, publishing houses, and other corporate customers in 11 countries. One of its recent projects involved the integration of its technology into SURF Music, a service that aims to pair top-end Japanese and Korean artists with talented songwriters from across the world. Musiio’s AI automatically tags the music demos uploaded by songwriters and producers so that artists can more easily find the types of music they’re looking for. Justine Suzuki, Chief Content Officer at SURF Music, comments, “We didn’t have the same level of technology for discovery in the B2B world as exists in B2C. That’s why we built what we built with SURF Music. We should be allowed to have the same technology, access, discoverability, and connectivity to music on the business side as well. Musiio allows that, and it makes the lives of our users easier.” As a result of its outstanding work in the music streaming industry, Musiio by SoundCloud has been awarded the title of Music AIPowered Solutions Company of the Year in the Global Excellence Awards 2024. Considering its success thus far, there is no doubt that the company looks towards a bright future as SoundCloud continues to lead the industry, discovering music and sharing great talent with the world. Contact: Hazel Savage Company: Musiio by SoundCloud Web Address: www.musiio.com Driven by a desire to make great music more discoverable, Musiio by SoundCloud offers industryleading AI-powered music search and automated tagging solutions to labels, publishers, streaming services, and sync companies. Here, we explore its background and current work as it is named Music AI-Powered Solutions Company of the Year in the Global Excellence Awards 2024. I
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