Music licensing platforms for short-form video, promoting, video games, and different visible media are large enterprise – and entice lots 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, by 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 mother or father ByteDance (valued at round $300 billion as of November 2024), seems to have a service within the works that might shake up the worldwide music licensing market.
ByteDance owns a service referred to as EasyOde, described as a “one-stop rights-cleared music platform.”
The existence of the EasyOde platform will doubtless 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.
Based on US Copyright Workplace filings unearthed by MBW, ByteDance, through its mysterious Cayman Islands-based affiliate Lemon Inc., has filed for 2 EasyOde-related logos, for the phrase mark and brand.
As you’ll be able to see beneath, one of many logos is formally registered and one remains to be pending.
The logos have been registered below varied classes together with: “Music licensing companies, particularly, industrial administration of the licensing of music of others” and;
“Downloadable cell purposes for cellphones and pill computer systems permitting customers to license, buy, play, share, obtain, compose, report, add and edit music, songs, and albums.”
Based on the EasyOde web site, the service gives “high-quality tracks and sound results to be used in new and conventional media initiatives, in addition to different music-related companies”.
The platform claims to characteristic “60,000 rights-cleared” tracks in its library.
The web site additionally explains that EasyOde “gives [a] music customization service with a number of fashion and length choices”.
The platform permits you to add the video you wish to license music for and it’ll then suggest music from its library that it deems to work effectively with the visible content material.
EasyOde additionally permits you to add reference tracks to “analyze [the] beats and construction of [the] music”.
Based on EasyOde: “For those who discover the demos meet your necessities, you’ll be able to go away 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 Consumer Content material that you just publish 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 instructed you concerning the in depth analysis in AI music performed by ByteDance’s Speech, Audio & Music Intelligence (SAMI) group. As we instructed you final yr, this group has turn out to be fairly the worldwide precedence at ByteDance/TikTok.
A kind of analysis initiatives described a generative mannequin referred to as MeLoDy that was skilled, in response to ByteDance’s SAMI researchers, on 257,000 hours of music that got here from 6.4 million audio recordsdata.
We additionally instructed 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.
Based on 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 expertise.
ByteDance, through 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 clients within the fields of synthetic intelligence, information mining, information analytics”.
The trademark additionally covers “machine-learning based mostly music era, and machine language translation; software program consultancy companies referring to synthetic intelligence, information mining, information analytics, and machine studying”.
BytePlus is listed in ByteDance’s company construction diagram, which you’ll see beneath.
We should emphasize right here that we’re in no way suggesting that any of the music accessible on EasyOde is AI-generated.
The reality is, we don’t know if any of it’s.
Based on EasyOde’s phrases of service, “all music made accessible 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 well-liked brief video apps”, options tracks “created by music producers, and music personalized by studios”.Music Enterprise Worldwide
