Fair Pay for Every Play, Ep 15: Andreas Spechtler

Emotional AI Music B2B Company Musimap joins Utopia Music

On September 29th, Utopia Music announced its acquisition of Quincy Jones’-backed Musimap, an emotional data enrichment company. However, grasping what that means is not as easy as you’d expect and for good reason. Usually, when cutting edge technology that is about to revolutionize an industry first hits the market, we all need to take a step back and really pay attention so that we can fully understand the importance of it.

So, on this week’s episode of Fair Pay for Every Play, Kristian Luoma sat down with Andreas Spechtler, director and investor at Musimap, to get a more in-depth view of what emotional data enrichment really means for the future of Music and how the Industry can benefit from this new technology.

Andreas is a proper tech veteran. He was president of Dolby International, had a long career at Sony Music and has seen the industry slowly transform from analogue delivery to digitized consumption. But after meeting the Musimap team and getting to know and understand how key this technology was he was ready to jump in with both feet.

“We started from the basics,” said Andreas. “The basic details of a song or what I call objective metadata. But music is much more than that. We all know music is super emotional. You cry, you kiss when you hear the right music. So, this [Musimap] is really amazing.”

Semantic definition of Music through data enrichment

According to Andreas, the power of Musimap relies on the technology defining music in a semantic way, which has multiple benefits for the industry. By creating such a detailed database of emotional patterns and linking different tracks to an emotional map via artificial intelligence cinematographers could for example find exactly the right track for their movie, radio stations could create specific playlists within milliseconds — 46 stations in Germany are already using Musimap -, and creators can know their audiences better and deliver higher quality products.

Alt image: Musimap emotional AI music tracking tool

No more depending on old music distribution models in which human intervention, as objective as it may have wanted to be, could lead on occasion to subjective results dependent on relationships and networks.

This new technology could enhance the creators’ experience and produce higher quality music by having a more in-depth understanding of their audiences. Of course, it all depends on how the technology is used, said Andreas. “A lot of artists are concerned that AI will change the creative process,” he said. “I don’t think so. I think it can enhance or support the creative process. It’s always the question of how much or how do you use AI? I mean you can create drones that kill people, or you can create drones that bring water to people.”

Though Musimap started out with little funding it has achieved amazing results in little time. Andreas said this is due to the “elite troop” of engineers the company has been able to garner. The tech team has done an insane amount of heavy lifting to be able to make this project become a reality with technology that was non-existent just a few years back.

So, when partnering with another organization, it was hugely important for Musimap to maintain that culture of detailed oriented specialists and be able to expand at the same time.

“I mean think about all the e-commerce possibilities,” he said. “The advertising possibilities. I mean the sky is bright. The sky is huge. We just need to find the right businesses [to partner with].”

Therefore, Utopia Music’s ethos of changing the industry using data, transparency and bringing about Fair Pay for Every Play, is what according to Andreas led to the merger. Both companies seem to share values and ideals and by unifying strengths, Andreas believes the future of Music is bright, huge and focused on growth and quality.

If you’re interested in getting to know more about the backend of the Music Industry and possibly even joining our team, follow our social media [@likeutopiamusic] for vacancies and events.