Musiio and Audio Network to test the ‘power of AI’ with music discovery partnership

The sync sector will get a fresh injection of AI thanks to a new alliance between Audio Network Limited, a creator and publisher of music for film, TV and other entertainment content, and Musiio, a machine learning specialist which helps digital entertainment companies with discovery and creation.

In what’s described as an industry first, Musiio and Audio Network will test the “power of AI” to improve speed and efficiencies, and make the most out of music library searches.

Audio Network, which was established in 2001 and has a strong Australian presence among the 1,000-plus composers, artists and producers on its books, becomes Musiio’s highest profile music client.

Singapore-based Musiio has expertise in B2B audio reference search, automated tagging and playlisting tools.

Musiio

Through the new arrangement, Audio Network’s search platform will be powered by Musiio’s tech, making its 170,000-strong catalogue more “discoverable” for clients.

Musiio is said to offer a new way of “listening” and enables searches of up to one million tracks in under two seconds, which should make life a lot easier for music supervisors.

Also, both parties will hope a deeper dive into a catalogue can expose the so-called “long tail,” by creating opportunities for more creators and composers.

“AI has been on the fringes of the music industry for the last few years, with talk of labels signing algorithms. But recently, more commercial and practical uses of this powerful computing technology have begun to surface,” explains Musiio CEO Hazel Savage, a streaming veteran who co-founded the company in June 2018 with Sweden-born software engineer and CTO Aron Pettersson.

“This deal demonstrates how AI and technology companies like ours can work with a company like Audio Network, to protect everything that is great about the music industry, the personal touch, the knowledge of experts and also to create tools that let the team step up to the challenge of a huge and fast-growing industry.”

Audio Network

Audio Network Chief Product Officer Matthew Hawn says his company approaches AI “carefully” in relation to music. “We view machine learning and AI techniques as instruments for extending human creativity, not something that replaces it,” he said. “Many AI tools for music are clever technology hacks in search of an actual problem to solve, but our partnership with Musiio for extending music search and recommendations is about solving real problems for our customers.”

Blending Musiio’s tech with human curation “will mean our artists and composers’ music is more accessible to more customers globally,” Hawn concludes.

Earlier this year, Musiio raised $1 million in seed funding. In April, independent studio Entertainment One announced it would buy Audio Network for around US$215 million in cash and stock.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.