AI portal will guide music industry in playlist creation

Musicube, a provider of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for the music industry, has launched a portal for music analysis that enables deep data-enabled results for musical mood playlists, artists based on topics or moods, and rapid tagging and recognition of MP3 files uploaded to the site. 

Music labels, libraries, archives, musicians/composers, music supervisors, and brand and agency professionals can leverage Musicube’s portal to conduct playlist prediction, with the Playlist Generator, and use the Musicube API for data enrichment and deep search capabilities. Musicube’s technology generates more than 500 tags (moods, instruments, and more) for more than 47 million songs using its audio analysis AI. Musicube’s consulting services enable firms to build advanced services on a white-label basis pitch prediction. The company’s customers include Sony Music, Budde Music Publishing, Music Promotion Network (MPN), and Phononet, among others. 

The musical features analyzed by Musicube include vocals, dominant instrument, energy, sound generation, tempo, scale, rhythm, timbre, tonality, harmony, texture, space, primary mood, and grooviness, among many other characteristics. Musicube’s technology can process metadata more rapidly and with greater degrees of contextualisation to enable searches on moods, musical genres, and tempo, among other characteristics. The Musicube value proposition lies in the company’s ability to sort through existing historical data and compile intelligence that is cross-service and cross-function. 

Musicube’s co-founder and chief marketing officer, Agnes Chung, will appear on the Music Recommendation 3.0 – Understanding Music Emotions and Memory for Audio Branding panel at the Most Wanted: Music conference at the Kesselhaus hall in the Kulturbrauerei in Berlin on Wednesday, 27 October from 5:30-6:15 pm CET, appearing alongside Professor Dr Daniel Müllensiefen, professor in music psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London; Steve Keller, sonic strategy director, Studio Resonate, SXM Media; Alexander Wodrich, managing director, why do birds, and Professor Dr Stefan Weinzierl, head of department ‘Audio Communication Group’, Technische Universität Berlin. 

“Music categorization, for rapid deployment in branding, social media, e-commerce, and music streaming itself, is gaining greater attention as rights holders and creators recognize how to monetize their music,” says David Hoga, founder and CEO of Musicube. “One of the main reasons for a lack of discoverability for lesser-known musicians, or for albums or deep-cut tracks from prominent musical arts, is the lack of sophisticated metadata that can deliver richer experiences and suit the tastes, moods, and commercial needs of both casual and professional listeners.”

The solutions provider recently completed a raise of $560,000 USD, led by German investors including Holger Hübner, co-founder of the Wacken Open Air, one of the world’s largest Metal festivals. It plans to expand into the U.S. market and deliver more scalable solutions for the growing music streaming market. 

Created by a team of musicologists and data scientists, musicube has emerged from the German audio and music-tech community to deliver deep semantic music search that enables music to be discovered more easily. Its software is delivered via web widgets and an Application Programming Interface (API) that delivers pristine metadata for music labels, publishers, streaming services, and broadcasters, among many other audiences. The Musicube Playlist Generator – at https://www.musicu.be/en/search/ – enables users to create complex song playlists that can then be played on Spotify and, soon, on other services. 

The value of music libraries and catalogues has increased with the continued growth of music streaming services. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), in its most recent Global Music Report, stated that global music industry revenues grew by 7.4% in 2020, with more than 100 million people subscribing to services, creating a global subscriber base of 443 million. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced earlier this year that the U.S. recorded music revenues grew 9.2% in 2020, up to $12.2 billion.