SoundCloud has acquired audio company AI Musiio, which makes technology that can “listen” to new music and supposedly identify hits. The acquisition, announced Tuesdayaims to help SoundCloud tidy up its huge library of amateur music and “will become a core to SoundCloud’s discovery experience,” the company said in a statement.
As DIY music distribution platforms like SoundCloud lower the barrier to entry for amateur artists and flood platforms with new music, identifying and promoting the good stuff has become even more difficult. SoundCloud claims that Musiio’s tools can quickly examine countless hours of (mostly bad) music and choose the songs that have patterns and features that correlate with charts.
“Acquiring Music accelerates our strategy to better understand how that music moves in its own way, which is critical to our success,” SoundCloud president Eliah Seton said in a statement.
Although far removed from the smoking clubs and A&R legends of antiquity, AI is becoming an increasingly critical part of finding Esperanto artists. Music distribution platform Tuncore announced in February that it is partnering with LA-based music company Fwaygo, which uses AI to match listeners with creators. Meanwhile, competing DIY music distributor DistroKid has an AI robot named Dave that reviews tracks and ranks qualities such as “dance ability” and “talkativeness”.
SoundCloud spokesman Cullen Heaney declined to disclose how much the company paid for Musiio, but the Singapore-based startup was reportedly assessed at $ 10 million last year. Music CEO Hazel Savage and CTO Aron Pettersson will remain on board, becoming SoundCloud’s vice presidents for music intelligence and AI and machine learning, respectively.