ByteDance has changed the power dynamics in the music industry.
THE $220 billion TikTok, the tech giant’s popular video-sharing app, is capable of beating hits, turning unknown artists into viral stars and generating new commercial success for “catalogue” tracks recorded decades ago. decades.
Now ByteDance wants budding creators TO DO the music for their short videos using an app she built herself, and she even developed and trained a template to get them started.
MBW told you last month that the parent of TikTok was working on an AI music app that “significantly lowers the barrier to music creation” after spotting a pair of job postings for experts in the field.
Today (June 30), the tech giant has confirmed that it is indeed launching a new free music production application, called Ripple. The app has two key features: a “Melody to Song” generator and a virtual recording studio.
The Melody to Song feature allows users to sing or hum a melody directly within the app, and Ripple will then expand the melody by generating instrumental accompaniment in a variety of different genres.
The length of the music produced will match the length of the inputted song and the template currently has the ability to create only instrumental music outputs.
As you can see from the screenshot below, you can also adjust BPM and effects.
According to Bytedance, the AI model was trained on music licensed or owned by Bytedance.
The company tells MBW that she was not trained on the music of the major record labels. MBW understands that Bytedance also used internally produced music to train the model.
“Ripple is designed to inspire musical creativity and help musicians, artists, and songwriters express themselves.”
Bytedance Spokesperson
A Bytedance spokesperson told MBW in a statement that “Ripple is designed to inspire musical creativity and help musicians, artists and composers express themselves.
They added, “We’re excited to see how creators are using Ripple to tap into their creativity to create the soundtrack for their own short videos.”
Today’s news relates to two key music technology trends that we’ve been following closely here at MBW for some time now.
The first is the booming market for mobile music production apps aimed at amateur music makers and aspiring musicians.
The other is the explosion of AI-powered generative music models being developed by tech giants. In recent weeks, MBW has written about Microsoft, Google and Meta research in this area.
A prominent player in the music production app market is Singapore-based BandLab, whose flagship social music-making app has more than 60 million registered users.
It offers a range of features for emerging creators, like the Studio cross-platform digital audio workstation, the Sounds royalty-free sample and loop service, and the SongStarter AI music generation tool. BandLab Technologies recently raised an additional $25 million in its Series B1 funding round, valuing the company at $425 million.
The launch of ByteDance’s new app means BandLab has a serious new rival to contend with.
Splice also operates in space, reported by Bloomberg be valued at nearly $500 million after raising $55 million in February 2021 (led by Goldman Sachs’ GS Growth).
Recently linked spear the Create Stack feature, which it says uses AI to match sounds from the entire Splice catalog “to give you endless song starts.” He also previously launched CoSo, an AI-powered music creation app.
According to the announcement, Ripple will launch on Friday, June 30 in the United States for a small group of invite-only beta testers. There is currently no information available on how long the beta phase will last or if there are further rollout plans.
In addition to Ripple’s melody-to-song tool, the app offers a virtual recording studio, just like other portable smart digital audio workstations (DAWs).
According to Bytedance, users will be able to share music they have created on TikTok and other social media platforms, but the app is not able to distribute music to TikTok song library.
You can request an invitation code to test the Ripple app on iOS mobile devices here.
MBW noted last summer that ByteDance had recently launched a machine learning-based music creation app called Mawfwhich analyzes incoming audio signals, then “plays back” those signals using what it says are machine-learned musical instrument models.
Moreover, according to a report last year from the news site Planet Tech, ByteDance had also recently launched a music-making app in China called “Sponge Band”.
According Tech Planet’s reportThis music recording and editing app also includes AI tools and notes that it’s especially “useful for users who want to further enhance audio effects and background music for short videos.”
MBW understands that the three apps, Mawf, Spongeband, and Ripple are all standalone apps.The music industry around the world
