How an AI is reinventing music search
Musicube revolutionizes music search: Thanks to Hamburg start-up funding, the idea quickly becomes an innovation that takes the music industry by storm.
The B2B Google for the music industry was created in Hamburg. Together, Agnes Chung and David Hoga have revolutionized the music industry with their start-up musicube in a very short space of time - worldwide. And the entire Hamburg start-up funding landscape pulled together to make this happen: a groundbreaking innovation at the interface of content and tech, made in Hamburg.
A revolution in music search
An artificial intelligence that makes music recommendations as individually tailored as your best friends? A Hamburg start-up has made it possible.
In their long career in the Hamburg music industry, the two founders Agnes and David have repeatedly noticed how much metadata the music industry has and how comparatively rudimentary the music search on streaming platforms unfortunately still works.
Together, the musicube team developed an AI and fed it with a wealth of metadata in a complex process until it was able to independently assign the songs to different characteristics. This works both on the basis of objective parameters such as key, tempo and timbre, but also via subjectively perceptible characteristics: musicube's AI can recognize which mood a song suits and create a playlist with corresponding recommendations.
With a brilliant idea, musicube went from start-up to successful company in no time at all: Founders Agnes and David explain how it all began.
There is so much metadata in the music industry. We wanted to harness this potential to burst the filter bubble in music streaming.
83 minutes
the AI needs to analyze 1,000 songs
54 million
Songs in the database
500+
Keywords for categorizing songs
An AI that can analyze songs in a matter of seconds: How does it work in detail?
At home in Hamburg
Although the tech industry in particular offers the potential to work in a decentralized way, the Hamburg location has been an important resource for the development of musicube - both in terms of the technology behind their AI and for the expansion of their company.
Starting with the circumstances that led Agnes and David to found musicube in the first place. The two met as employees of the Hamburg-based company PhonoNet, which provides metadata services for other companies in the music industry - such as Warner Music, which also has its German headquarters in Hamburg.
The close networking of the Hamburg music industry was also the reason why musicube was able to quickly build up a strong network of potential customers. After all, Hamburg is not only home to major labels such as Warner Music and landmarks such as the Elbphilharmonie concert hall. There is also a lively music scene with countless record stores, large concert agencies and event locations. And of course the many companies that support these players in their work.
And as a company that positions itself at the interface of content and tech, the tech location of Hamburg is also important for musicube: there are large companies such as Google, Facebook, Dropbox and Snap and the infrastructure to support young companies from the industry in expanding.
musicube is a prime example of the success of Hamburg's start-up funding: from the first steps in the incubator Media Lift to the purchase by the US market leader Songtradr, they have used the support offered to young companies by Hamburg's many funding agencies at all points.
