Photo Credit: Musical AI
GenAI music rights startup Musical AI has raised $1.5 million ahead of its seed funding round planned for later this year.
Musical AI is one of the genAI music rights startups vying to be the go-to marketplace for AI companies to strike licensing deals with rights holders.
The company has raised $2.1 million CAD (around $1.5 million) of funding ahead of a separate seed funding round planned for the first half of the year. This round was led by Canadian venture capital firm Build Ventures, alongside unnamed angel investors. Rights holders like Symphonic Distribution and Kanjian, and AI companies like Beatoven, are also on board.
Musical AI is not just serving as a licensing broker, but features tech to analyze the outputs of its AI clients — music generated by its AI models — to accurately divide revenues between the original music inputs used.
“As the opportunity for revenue and need for licensed content become clearer every day, we’re seeing more rights holders and AI companies recognize the need for our platform,” says Musical AI COO and former Beatport head Matt Adell. “Generative AI will need attribution, and we’re the first to master it and provide a secure platform that implements it along with industry-accepted revenue sharing.”
“If we want AI training to be sustainable and ethical, we need attribution. Musical AI is the only company offering it in the audio space,” adds Musical AI CEO Sean Power. “I’m thrilled that discerning investors are backing our efforts to transform how AI is trained.”
According to Musical AI, the platform works by determining what inputs have led to a particular generative AI output, from which it can parse what percentage of an output came from which data source. Rights holders can monitor, take down, and sunset usage of the works they own, while generative AI companies can access licensed data and use Musical AI’s reports to monitor usage for each output generated.