Music licensing platforms for short-form video, promoting, video games, and different visible media are large enterprise – and entice a variety of consideration from deep-pocketed personal traders.
Sweden’s Epidemic Sound was valued at $1.4 billion in a $450 million funding spherical in 2021, through which Blackstone Development (BXG) and EQT Development acquired stakes within the firm. Epidemic is reportedly now eyeing an IPO.
In the meantime, over in China, TikTok guardian ByteDance (valued at round $300 billion as of November 2024), seems to have a service within the works that would shake up the worldwide music licensing market.
ByteDance owns a service known as EasyOde, described as a “one-stop rights-cleared music platform.”
The existence of the EasyOde platform will possible be information to a lot of the worldwide music business.
There’s little info on-line about when it launched, and ByteDance has not responded to MBW’s request for details about its ambitions for the platform or how the music is sourced.
In keeping with US Copyright Workplace filings unearthed by MBW, ByteDance, by way of its mysterious Cayman Islands-based affiliate Lemon Inc., has filed for 2 EasyOde-related logos, for the phrase mark and emblem.
As you may see under, one of many logos is formally registered and one continues to be pending.
The logos have been registered beneath numerous classes together with: “Music licensing providers, particularly, industrial administration of the licensing of music of others” and;
“Downloadable cell functions for cell phones and pill computer systems permitting customers to license, buy, play, share, obtain, compose, report, add and edit music, songs, and albums.”
In keeping with the EasyOde web site, the service provides “high-quality tracks and sound results to be used in new and conventional media tasks, in addition to different music-related providers”.
The platform claims to function “60,000 rights-cleared” tracks in its library.
The web site additionally explains that EasyOde “supplies [a] music customization service with a number of fashion and length choices”.
The platform allows you to add the video you need to license music for and it’ll then suggest music from its library that it deems to work nicely with the visible content material.
EasyOde additionally allows you to add reference tracks to “analyze [the] beats and construction of [the] music”.
In keeping with EasyOde: “For those who discover the demos meet your necessities, you may depart your contact info on the ‘Customization Service’ web page. If not, please assist present 5 pattern tracks per fashion for us to research and customise the fashion for you.”
EasyOde’s Phrases of Service stipulate that customers should “acknowledge and agree that the Person Content material that you simply put up and add whereas utilizing [Easy Ode’s Services are created by or legally licensed to you”.
The platform also includes the following disclaimer: “We respect intellectual property rights and ask you to do the same”.
It adds: “As a condition of your access to and use of the Services, you agree not to infringe intellectual property rights of any person while using the Services.”
One of the most interesting elements of the EasyOde website, however, isn’t what it can do, but rather who at ByteDance it was potentially built by.
In the bottom left-hand corner of the site showing the website’s site map, you’ll notice a reference to the copyright belonging to ByteDance’s SAMI team — a name you may recall reading in MBW’s extensive reporting on TikTok and ByteDance’s music-related activities.
Last March, we published a pair of widely shared reports about ByteDance‘s ambitions in AI-generated music.
In a type of articles, we informed you in regards to the in depth analysis in AI music carried out by ByteDance’s Speech, Audio & Music Intelligence (SAMI) group. As we informed you final yr, this group has turn out to be fairly the worldwide precedence at ByteDance/TikTok.
A kind of analysis tasks described a generative mannequin known as MeLoDy that was educated, in response to ByteDance’s SAMI researchers, on 257,000 hours of music that got here from 6.4 million audio information.
We additionally informed you about a batch of US patents and logos secured by ByteDance and its Lemon Inc. affiliate that present IP safety within the US for the Chinese language firm’s AI music-related applied sciences.
In keeping with the EasyOde web site, the platform is “owned by BytePlus”.
BytePlus was launched by ByteDance in 2021– reportedly as a brand new division to promote its AI know-how.
ByteDance, by way of its Lemon Inc. affiliate, owns logos in the US for ‘BytePlus‘ which seem to have been formally registered in Could 2023.
The trademark listed on the USPTO describes a “Platform as a Service (PaaS)” and covers what the submitting states are “pc software program platforms for producing and delivering personalised suggestions to prospects within the fields of synthetic intelligence, knowledge mining, knowledge analytics”.
The trademark additionally covers “machine-learning primarily based music era, and machine language translation; software program consultancy providers regarding synthetic intelligence, knowledge mining, knowledge analytics, and machine studying”.
BytePlus is listed in ByteDance’s company construction diagram, which you’ll see under.
We should emphasize right here that we’re not at all suggesting that any of the music out there on EasyOde is AI-generated.
The reality is, we don’t know if any of it’s.
In keeping with EasyOde’s phrases of service, “all music made out there on the positioning is created or licensed by EasyOde”.
The web site additionally states that its library of 60,000 “rights-cleared” tracks, which it says contains “top-trending background music in widespread brief video apps”, options tracks “created by music producers, and music custom-made by studios”.Music Enterprise Worldwide
