A web-based audio sharing platform and streamer, SoundCloud has acquired Musiio, an AI music curation firm. With Musiio’s workforce and expertise, SoundCloud plans to strengthen its music discovery options, serving to the platform compete with streaming giants like Spotify. The phrases of the deal are undisclosed.
Primarily based in Singapore and based in 2018, Musiio constructed an AI that may “pay attention” to music quicker than any human presumably may, tag the audio and curate playlists. The expertise helps predict what songs a listener would wish to hear subsequent, and if customers spend extra time on SoundCloud, then the corporate finally earnings.
When TechCrunch last covered Musiio after its $1 million seed spherical, the corporate had simply collaborated with its first public consumer, the Free Music Archive, a Artistic Commons-like free music website developed by impartial U.S. radio station WFMU. Musiio managed to floor a variety of songs that had been “misplaced” within the sprawling catalog, serving to one eight-year-old observe double its performs inside two days.
Nothing will ever substitute the intimacy of a hand-picked observe checklist on a mixtape, however the upside of AI curation is that it might floor lesser identified songs and artists to a brand new viewers. In a single fascinating case, Spotify’s AI popularized a uncommon b-side from the indie rock heroes Pavement referred to as “Harness Your Hopes,” which went on to turn out to be the band’s most-played music on the platform — even Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus didn’t recognize the song when he heard it enjoying in a Portland bakery.
SoundCloud president Eliah Seton thinks that the potential of Musiio’s AI will yield particularly attention-grabbing outcomes on a platform like SoundCloud, the place anybody can add music no matter whether or not they’re signed to a label or have a distributor.
“SoundCloud is a singular enterprise. Its singular market place as each a music-streaming service for followers and an artists providers enterprise is not like some other streamer. Which means, it’s the solely platform that really holds a direct relationship with artists and listeners,” Seton instructed TechCrunch.
Seton didn’t specify what varieties of latest options followers can count on to see, however added that he hopes Musiio’s expertise will allow SoundCloud to “know what tracks are transferring earlier than anybody else.”
Based in 2007, SoundCloud claims it has over 300 million tracks from 30 million creators, that are streamed in 190 international locations. Most just lately, it raised $75 million from SiriusXM in 2020.
