Can computers compose music? One UK start up thinks so and is planning to compose music for you with the help of AI
“Music is the one area of the video creation process that people don’t have a hand in themselves,” Ed Rex says. “So we thought we could give them a tool to create their own music really easily.”
Rex is a composer-turned-coder and CEO who runs a young company called Jukedeck. The startup sprang from a curious thought Rex had while studying music theory at Cambridge University. “If computers could be involved in the music making process,” he wondered, “what would that mean?” The question hints at a broader debate that continues to engage programmers and artists alike: Can machines exercise creativity?
Jukedeck’s platform, which uses artificial intelligence to write music, seems to suggest that the answer to the question is yes. Rex and his cofounder Patrick Stobbs—who he’s known since they sang in the King’s College Choir at eight years old—built a system that uses machine learning algorithms to choose one note after another, generating a short and sonically pleasant piece of music. From a user’s standpoint, Jukedeck works by first offering you four categories of music—folk, rock, electronic, ambient—and then asking what kind of mood you need. Uplifting? Meditative? Angry? Tell it how long the piece should last, and Jukedeck takes about 20 seconds before delivering a custom-made MP3. Users can request as many as they’d like, and Rex says no two are alike.
Bespoke music designed by algorithms is the stuff of the future. Replacing human musicians is far from the point—Rex says, “it’s not as simple as codifying it and making music,” partly because “we as a society haven’t really agreed on what makes a good piece of music.” Instead, Jukedeck is harnessing data about music to empower video producers, who generally can’t make music or negotiate through copyrights on existing music.
Rex plans to keep Jukedeck competitive by expanding its catalog (if you can call it that, given that everything gets generated on the spot) by adding more available genres. “We’ve had requests for funk and hip hop and lounge music.” After an invite-only trial, Jukedeck launched to the general public in December at Techcrunch Disrupt London, and it already has a few hundred thousand subscribers, many of which are vloggers, Rex says.
More here: www.jukedeck.com
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