Image Credit: Synchtank

Musiio will aid SoundCloud in identifying both “talent and trends” to provide the best music discovery experience to SoundCloud users.

SoundCloud has acquired Musiio – an AI music curation company based in Singapore. SoundCloud hopes to improve the music discovery capabilities on its platform as a result, reports MusicTech.

Musiio – an AI Music Startup for music curation

Hazel Savage, a former streaming executive for Universal, founded Musiio in 2018 with full stack developer Aron Pettersson. Musiio’s AI technology “listens” to music and provides automated tagging in addition to playlisting tools.

Musiio listens to tracks at scale and identifies characteristics and patterns within the music. The AI can then predict which songs a listener would prefer to hear next. This is great news for DJs and music lovers everywhere. Now we’re far more likely to find tracks we like easily. Oh, and it doesn’t matter if the artists are established or small-time either.

The terms of the deal are not disclosed to the public, but SoundCloud suggests that Musiio is going to become a core element of SoundCloud’s discovery experience for users. Furthermore, Musiio will “help to identify talent and trends ahead of anybody else”. Is there potential that this acquisition could be a huge win for independent artists?

Back in July, Musiio secured an undisclosed round of funding which gave the company a valuation of $10 million, up from $3.5 million.

SoundCloud is a unique business. Its singular market position as both a music-streaming service for fans and an artists services business is unlike any other streamer. Meaning, it is the only platform that truly holds a direct relationship with artists and listeners. SoundCloud hosts more music from more creators than any platform on the planet. Acquiring Musiio accelerates our strategy to better understand how that music is moving in a proprietary way, which is critical to our success.

Eliah Seton, SoundCloud President

Savage and Pettersson will join SoundCloud as VP for Music Intelligence and VP for AI and Machine Learning. And Musiio’s employees will become fully integrated members of teh SoundeCloud team, all retaining their positions.