SoundCloud has acquired Singapore-based Musiio, an AI music curation company. With the acquisition SoundCloud wants to strengthen its music discovery features. Musiio’s technology uses machine learning to scan, tag and categorize music. Musiio can ‘listen’ to any song and tell you what instruments it features, what genre it’s in, and even what mood or emotional tone the song conveys.
Based in Singapore in 2018, Musiio developed AI that can ‘listen’ to music faster than any human possibly could, tag the audio and curate playlists. The Musiio AI helps predict which songs a listener would want to hear next. It is often difficult to find music using traditional search terms such as BPM, key or even genres. The Musiio AI directly addresses this problem by automatically tagging uploaded tracks with metadata derived solely from the audio. With Musiio classifiers such as mood, energy, genre, vocal presence, and use case the AI can key in on what each listener wants to hear.
Co-founder Hazel Savage said “You can use this process to replicate anything the human ear might be able to recognize, such as the BPM and genre, right down to how much of a hit something might be. Our new technology is looking for hits, virality, talent and melodic familiarity as well as a bunch of other factors that make up great music.”
In July 2021, Musiio was able to attract an undisclosed sum of capital, resulting in a $10 million valuation. Tileyard Group owner Paul Kempe and Premiumbeat founder Francois Arbour were the primary investors.
In a press statement, Eliah Seton, President of SoundCloud said: “SoundCloud hosts more music from more creators than any platform on the planet. Acquiring Musiio accelerates our strategy to better understand how that music is moving in a proprietary way, which is critical to our success.”
Musiio was founded by Hazel Savage and Aron Petterson. For more information on Musiio visit their site.
