SoundCloud has acquired audio company Musiio, which is developing technology that can “listen” to new music and identify hits. The acquisition, announced Tuesday, aims to help SoundCloud sort out its vast library of amateur music and will “form the basis of SoundCloud’s discovery experience,” the company said in a statement.
As DIY music distribution platforms, such as SoundCloud, reduce the barrier to entry for amateur artists and flood platforms with new music, identifying and promoting good things becomes even more challenging. SoundCloud claims that Musiio instruments can quickly sift through countless hours of (mostly bad) music and choose songs that have patterns and features that correlate with the top charts.
“Acquiring Musiio accelerates our strategy to better understand how this music moves in its own way, which is crucial to our success,” SoundCloud President Elia Seton said in a statement.
Although far from the smoky clubs and legends of A&R in the past, AI is becoming an increasingly critical part of finding new artists. The music distribution platform Tunecore announced in February that it was partnering with Los Angeles-based music company Fwaygo, which uses AI to match listeners to creators. Meanwhile, rival DIY music distributor DistroKid has an artificial intelligence bot named Dave that reviews songs and ranks qualities such as “dance” and “talk.”
SoundCloud spokesman Cullen Heaney declined to say how much the company paid for Musiio, but the Singapore-based startup was reportedly valued at $ 10 million last year. Musiio CEO Hazel Savage and CTO Aaron Petterson will remain on board, becoming SoundCloud’s vice presidents for music intelligence and AI and machine learning, respectively.
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