Brisbane music AI startup scores spot in major investment intitiative

Techstars Music’s accelerator investment initiative has announced 11 music startups that will be taking part in this year’s inaugural program.

The California-based accelerator will invest US$120,000 in DJ-app creator Pacemaker, adaptive-music firm Weav, blockchain-focused startup Jaak, AI composer Amper, live event concierge Hurdl, as well as other international startups SyncSpot, Superpowered, Shimmur, Robin and Pippa.

Brisbane startup PopGun has also been selected. PopGun’s focus is music AI, using deep computer learning to make predictions, improve music search and recommendations, and make original pop music. Its founders are Stephen Phillips (CEO) and Adam Hibble (CTO), with the former also a co-founder of We Are Hunted, a company acquired by Twitter in 2012.

The program is headed by former Twitter, Topspin Media and Yahoo! Music employee Bob Moczydlowsky and was originally announced last year. Along with the investment of a substantial amount of funding to boost each startup, Techstars Music will take a 6% equity stake in each company.

Additionally, a mentorship system has been established with notable music execs Jeremy Erlich, David Marcus, Jody Mulkey, Spotify’s Sumit Varshney, Pandora’s Dagan Josephson and Amazon’s Noah Shanok lined up to advise the cohort.

Each startup will be based in a centralised back office and will share the same resources, connections and perks to grow their business.

With the backing of Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, Harmonix and Sonos, the program’s class of 2017 will add to Techstars’ strong catalogue of 905 companies, who’ve gone on to raise more than $3 billion in funding between them, with a collective market cap of $7.8 billion, according to MusicAlly.

In May, all 11 startups taking part in the program will present at an exhibit in Los Angeles to showcase the progress they have made while participating in the Techstars Music program.

The full list of startups in the 2017 program:

Amper Music (US)

Hurdl (US)

Jaak (UK)

Pacemaker (Sweden)

Pippa (US)

PopGun (Australia)

Robin (Canada)

Shimmur (US)

Superpowered (US / Hungary)

SyncSpot (UK)

Weav (US / UK)