Matt Henninger is the VP of Business Development at Music.AI. On February 29, he led a webinar named “Indiescussion: Leveraging Drag-and-Drop AI for Revenue Growth.”
For this event, Music.AI joined forces with the A2IM (American Association of Independent Music). The main purpose was to introduce and elaborate on the use of AI to boost income, particularly in the music and entertainment industries.
About the host: Who is Matt Henninger?
With over 15 years in the industry, Matt Henninger has contributed to the launch of roughly 350 innovative music technology services. His journey includes names like Audible Magic, SOCAN’s Dataclef, MediaNet, and Rovi.
Additionally, Henninger’s background as a professional bassist brings valuable insights into the creativity-technology mix.
Webinar highlights: Drag-and-Drop AI for Revenue Growth
Moving forward, we’ll discuss the main points of the webinar, going over topics like Music.AI’s origins, its intuitive design, and a wide selection of modules designed to streamline workflows.
We will also share strategic partnerships with top-notch tech companies that further enhance our platform.
The Genesis of Music.AI
Henninger began the webinar by tracing the origins of Music.AI to the Moises App, which has over 40 million users worldwide. The app’s popularity underscored AI’s potential in music, motivating the creation of Music.AI.
This platform improves music industry workflows in multiple ways. It integrates a suite of AI models and tools with advanced third-party technologies.
Partnerships
During the webinar, Matt Henninger highlighted two major Music.AI partnerships: Masterchannel and Cyanite.
Masterchannel offers AI-powered music mastering online. Moises’ collaboration with this brand focuses on integrating stereo-to-spatial mixing technology.
The joint effort allows users to combine Music.AI’s stem separation module with Masterchannel’s expertise, creating efficient, quick, and cost-effective spatial masters.
By dragging and dropping in Masterchannel, you’ve now connected the technologies of multiple organizations for a workflow. (Matt Henninger)
The partnership with Cyanite, a leader in metadata extraction technology, aims to expand data analysis tools.
Cyanite’s contribution adds significant depth to the information obtained from music. Their system retrieves a broad spectrum of metadata from audio files, including:
- mood;
- style;
- theme;
- energy;
- emotion.
Henninger also discussed how these tools can be used on non-traditional inputs, like extracting music from video content. This allows for unique audio analysis in ads or documentaries, reflecting AI’s novel solutions.
Automated lyric transcription and translation
Henninger pointed out how automated lyric transcription and word-by-word alignment are standout features.
The Music.AI platform can identify up to 88 languages and accurately transcribe lyrics. Post-transcription, the AI can translate lyrics into different languages, as demonstrated during the webinar.
If you then apply text-to-speech, which we have here as well, you can start to create localized versions of content.
Despite occasional phonetic word confusion, the overall accuracy is impressive, with results currently in the low 90s percentile. This feature allows multilingual access to lyrics, helping understand foreign songs.
Voice synthesis technology
The webinar also showcased our voice synthesis solution for the music industry. After learning from extensive recordings, the technology mimics singers’ vocal range and producers’ preferred microphones, ensuring high-quality outputs.
Henninger highlighted Music.AI's innovative revenue-sharing model for music creators. This model demonstrates our commitment to cutting-edge technology and sustainable business practices that value the creative process.
Our thesis was that this could be a really interesting new revenue stream for singers.
Partnership with Music Rightz for sync licensing
Matt Henninger also discussed a recent collaboration with Music Rightz, a Los Angeles-based company renowned for its high-quality sync licensing.
This partnership lets Music.AI combine its tech solutions with Music Rightz’s licensing, transforming static assets into dynamic ones. It enables innovative track isolation, audio manipulation, and composition or recording licensing.
The Papa Johns case
Matt Henninger illustrated Music.AI’s problem-solving capabilities with a real-life example. This case featured a localization challenge faced by Papa Johns, the popular pizza chain.
The company was set to launch a holiday season TV campaign featuring basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal. The ad was to be aired internationally, but with the inconvenience of requiring subtitles throughout the entire narration for Spanish-speaking countries.
Recognizing the need for a more immersive and engaging solution, Papa Johns approached Music.AI for an innovative fix.
Music.AI’s technology came to the rescue by creating a unique workflow:
- First, using audio from the original shoot while respecting privacy protocols, a private voice model for Shaquille O'Neal was likely created;
- Then, the English script was transcribed and then translated into Spanish;
- The translated script was then processed using the Shaquille O'Neal voice model;
- This resulted in a synthesized Spanish voiceover that was seamlessly integrated into the ad.
We were able to create a private model of Shaquille O'Neal’s voice based on the microphone from the day of the shoot. Right? That was enough audio to train a model.
The localized commercial was successfully deployed and aired throughout Latin America. This demonstrates the fast and scalable solutions Music.AI offers for addressing real-world challenges.
The concept in the platform is that everything is locked down by account. So, (…) for a rights holder, for a label, for a producer, for anyone: Your models — your private vocal models — are only accessible to your account and to your organization. They do not cross-train, so you’re not making anything change anywhere else. They are 100% isolated to you.
Summary
Led by Matt Henninger for Music.AI and the A2IM, the webinar unveiled the potential of AI in revolutionizing the music and entertainment industries.
Music.AI, with its user-friendly platform, incorporates proprietary and third-party modules to offer customized, flexible, and scalable solutions. From automated lyric transcription and translation to voice synthesis, the platform offers a plethora of features designed to enhance the creative processes in music.
The strategic partnerships with Masterchannel and Cyanite further expand its capabilities, opening up possibilities for advanced spatial mixing and comprehensive metadata extraction.
With a firm commitment to ethical AI development and respect for artists' rights, Music.AI is leading the way in leveraging AI for music revenue growth.
Whether you could not attend the webinar or just wanted a recap, we hope this content was helpful and insightful.
Now, we invite you to explore the Music.AI platform and discover how our APIs and modules can assist you. Additionally, keep an eye out for our upcoming events and updates!
Check out the full webinar here: