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The Importance of Music Auto-Tagging for Content Strategies

The Importance of Music Auto-Tagging for Content Strategies

by | Jul 2, 2024 | AI Analysis, How-to Guide, Music Industry, Resources

An Introduction

By Jakob Höflich, Co-Founder and CMO of Cyanite

When I was 19, I worked at community radio 4ZZZ in Brisbane, tasked with digitizing daily CD deliveries, tagging their genre, and sorting them in the library. It was a tedious and challenging task – every mistake could persist in the library until corrected. And let’s face it, this rarely was the case. This was one of the experiences that motivated me to found Cyanite many years later, also to help catalog owners tag their catalogs with AI and to eradicate the legacy of tagging mistakes made in the past 25 years of digitization.

While Auto-Tagging to create a clean and better searchable library has become a commodity, with various music companies worldwide leveraging this to alleviate the burden on their tagging teams and create more space for creative work, there is one underappreciated use case that has recently grown in significance: using Auto-Tagging data on a global catalog basis to derive actionable insights for your content strategy.

From Hunches to Data-Driven Insights

If you own or work with a music catalog, you likely have a solid understanding of its character. But what if the number of songs goes in the tens of thousands or even beyond? How confident can you be to know the profile of the catalog and what it stands for? When making important decisions about the creative direction of your catalog, especially with multiple stakeholders involved, this ‘feeling’ can tend to be subjective and leave room for guesswork. It’s the music’s subjective and “magical” nature that makes it hard to quantify and discuss.

That’s why keywords remain crucial when managing and developing a catalog where AI can be so helpful to your work. By providing data insights, AI can turn these hunches into consistent and concrete knowledge.

Here are three benefits of leveraging music Auto-Tagging for your content strategy.

1. Deep Understanding of a Catalog’s Character

AI music Auto-Tagging dives deep into the sound character of a catalog. By translating the complexity of music into concrete datapoints such as genres and moods, it allows for a shared, objective and consistent understanding across your team or company. Imagine having a precise breakdown of your catalog’s characteristics at your fingertips. Like, which percentage of my repertoire is Rock, Funk, Disco? Does it stand for upbeat or more melancholic tones? Do I maybe have a gender problem by favoring one more over the other? This not only enhances internal cohesion but also aligns strategies and decisions.

Pro Tip: Our Auto-Tagging focuses on creative metadata, extracting information such as genres, BPM, key, and energy. Curious? Check out our full taxonomy. It does not extract copyright or performance metadata. A smart move here is to pair the AI-driven insights with other data pools. For example, pairing AI-insights with performance and sales data can reveal things like: Only 2% of my catalog is Hip Hop, yet this content has a 200% higher performance rate.

2. Uncovering Blind Spots and Highlighting Trends

AI’s ability to uncover blind spots and highlight trends within a catalog is another significant benefit. This data-driven approach can reveal underutilized niches or trends when data is placed on a timeline. Whether it’s identifying a resurgence in a particular genre or pinpointing areas with high sync opportunities, AI insights shed light on the hidden corners of a catalog. Particularly for sync teams of companies that do not have a distinct genre profile it is beneficial to have a balanced catalog to answer to the upmost possible amounts of briefs with adequate content.

3. Informed Decisions for Catalog Acquisition

Lastly, AI-driven insights are not limited to managing your existing catalog. They are invaluable when evaluating to-be-acquired catalogs. While frontline repertoire might be familiar, B-sides and deep cuts often remain mysterious territories. By thoroughly analyzing these lesser-known tracks, AI can contribute a creative due diligence aspect by providing a comprehensive understanding, which in turn informs better acquisition decisions. This ensures you’re investing in a catalog that has the ability to complement your existing one.

Contrarily, if you want to sell a catalog, comprehensive tagging data on your repertoire can help you identify the perfect acquirer or prove the future longevity of your catalog to drive up the multiple.

A Real-World Example

A German publisher utilizing Cyanite’s AI insights discovered previously underappreciated genres, allowing them to optimize their catalog strategy effectively. The analysis showed that the genres Hip Hop, Funk, and RnB and the mood Epic were underrepresented even though both have been extremely valuable qualities for successful sync placements in the last years.

Visual representations, such as pie charts and graphs, can further show how AI can dissect and categorize catalog elements, providing clear, actionable insights.

All data above can be retrieved via our API.

Conclusion: Embracing the Future with AI

AI music Auto-Tagging can be a great help for developing content strategies in the music industry. These actionable insights provide a deep, data-driven understanding of catalogs, uncover blind spots, highlight trends, and inform strategic decisions for catalog acquisitions.

Undoubtedly, AI can’t and shouldn’t replace the final decision-making process as it can’t anticipate the future as us humans do. But it can be used as a great tool to navigate this process with data that make it easier – and often more convincingly – to talk about the magic of music.

As we live in a time where content production is at an all-time peak providing the sync market with opportunities as never before, every song in the catalog should have the same chance of being discovered. Having a well-organized and indexed catalog is key to that.

 

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AI Music Discovery: How Marmoset Uses Cyanite | A Case Study

AI Music Discovery: How Marmoset Uses Cyanite | A Case Study

by | Apr 13, 2024 | AI Analysis, Case Study, Interview, Music Industry

Founded in 2010, Marmoset is a full-service music licensing agency representing hundreds of independent artists and labels. At the heart of it, their core experience involves browsing for music. They offer music discovery for any moving visual media. From sync (movies & TV) to advertisements, video games, and wedding videos.  Powered by Marmoset is Track Club, which is subscription-based as opposed to a la carte or custom licensing. Find out below how they use Cyanite for both of their services to amplify AI music discovery.

In 2019 Marmoset became the first Certified B Corporation music agency on the planet, providing tangible metrics, social sustainability, and fulfilling environmental standards.

2 Screenshots of Marmoset Music and Tracklcub - both utilizing AI music discovery through Cyanite.

https://www.trackclub.com/                       https://www.marmosetmusic.com/ 

We sat down with Alex Paguirigan, product manager at Marmoset, to learn more about how Marmoset uses Cyanite both within their internal processes and on the front end of their services through AI music discovery and more. Cyanite and Marmoset have been working together for over 1.5 years now.

“We utilize Cyanite’s API and web app on a daily basis for auto-tagging, and similarity search.”

Alex Paguirigan

The Key Elements Within this Case Study

  • Challenges that Marmoset encountered before engaging with Cyanite.

  • Exploring the specific Cyanite solutions currently employed by Marmoset.

  • Understanding the benefits Marmoset derives from Cyanite’s AI solutions.

  • Delving into the integration process.

  • Marmoset’s future roadmap and strategic outlook.
A screenshot of a youtube video on how Marmoset uses Cyanite for AI music discovery with a middle aged man smiling.
Check out this 2-minute summary of our video interview.

“What made you initially reach out to us and how do you use Cyanite today?”

“Before I was a product manager, I had a catalog management position tagging music with metadata manually. Because of how subjective music is, we always wanted to make sure that a human was behind the wheel to attribute metadata.”

“But when it comes down to calculating the BPM and key of any given song, you would have to put someone behind a piano with a metronome, which is completely unsustainable and a strange use of labor. So that, plus the challenge of significantly growing our catalog told us – we are behind the times here.”

Initially, Marmoset was trying to improve and speed up their tagging process with Cyanite. 1.5 years later they ended up with much more than only a tagging solution. To make their catalog even more discoverable they integrated an additional solution powered by Cyanite: the Similarity Search. 

The Products that Marmoset Currently Uses

Web App – Allows you to upload your entire catalog into your Cyanite library, creating your own Spotify with our Similarity Search and Free Text Search. No coding required.

API – Lets you integrate Cyanite into your own system. Implement Cyanite’s full-scope analysis and search technology into your current environment! Coding skills required.

Auto-Tagging – Let Cyanite tag your music with Genres, Moods, Keywords, Brand Values, Auto-Descriptions, and much more. Explore all the tags.

Similarity Search – Get similar songs recommended for either tracks from your library or external reference tracks from Spotify and YouTube. 

Using these in combination allows for superior AI music discovery.

How Marmoset Benefits from Cyanite – AI Music Discovery

[Click on any of the headings below to find out more about them.] 

Reduced search time for the right songs

“With this feature we allow our users to discover similar songs to the ones they think work best for their needs.”

“We never want to be a site or a product that you spend hours of your day on. We would much rather you look through fewer things and get what you need within 10 minutes and never visit the site again because you already have exactly what you need. And this feature definitely helped with that.”

Faster song-to-market time

“Getting our artists onboarded faster with us quite literally has been a major benefit of integrating Cyanite.”

“Some artists and labels offer us their entire back-catalog dating back over 20 years. There’s only so much time in the day for a human to tag all of that and although we are still humanly involved in the tagging, Cyanite gives us a head start with this.”

“We don’t want to tell an artist ‘Hey, you’re gonna have to wait a bit because it takes time to tag your music and get it in the system.’”

AI music discovery with a consistent language across Marmoset's catalog

“Cyanite’s Auto Tagging makes our catalog more discoverable by people who are not you.”

“After I learned Marmoset’s internal tagging system and got a lot of practice with tagging the first 50-100 songs without any assistance, I suddenly developed my own system within a system. And I stuck with that.

When you’re tagging the music with the help of Cyanite, it forces the person behind the computer to reconsider what they hear.”

“On the worst days, that means you are questioning your musical knowledge. But on most days, Cyanite hears something that you don’t, and you expand your knowledge of music because you reconsider your judgment call. Or it gives out the exact tags that you thought of before and simply reassures you in your confidence.”

“And that only makes our catalog stronger.”

“Someone in Germany may have a very different definition of confidence, so it allows us again to close that gap of mistranslation or misunderstanding between people who may come from completely different cultural backgrounds, but still need to get their confident song into their Instagram Reel for 2024.”

Want to know what tags we are talking about? Check out our full tagging taxonomy here.

Exploitation of hidden and unknown parts of the catalog

“Cyanite has maybe most significantly improved our work, with its Similarity Search that allows us to enhance our searches objectively, melting away biases and subjective blind spots that humans naturally have.”

“When getting a brief like ‘sunny and happy, with an acoustic guitar, piano, et cetera, et cetera’ we are talking about tens of thousands of possibilities here. Plus sometimes you only have half an hour to answer that brief.”

“While our catalog and search team are very well versed in our catalog, they naturally have their own internal biases and favorites—after all, that’s human. Cyanite adds some objectivity to that.” 

As Jakob, one of our founders would say: “The AI doesn’t care if you’re Ed Sheeran or a bedroom producer. If your track fits the reference, it will surface it.”

Using Spotify & YouTube references to answer briefs

“With other types of briefs such as ‘Hey, this is what the head of music at McDonald’s loves but we can’t afford this song.’, using external reference tracks from Spotify or Youtube to find similar-sounding tracks in our catalog made things very easy for us.”

Increasing fair treatment of artists

“Using Cyanite we provided a more fair game for our artists to play. At the end of the day, that means more money in their pockets.”

“The moment we press ‘show similar songs’, the AI gives chances to people who may not have had the benefit of having that one crucial tag that would have surfaced their song to the top of our browse experience.”

“Maybe we’ve missed that when we tagged it back in 2016. Cyanite doesn’t care about that. Cyanite just says ‘This is a pretty good track based on what you’ve liked so far.’”

This way all artists benefit from AI Music Discovery.

Faster onboarding of new team members.

“What has been integral in onboarding new staff members, is allowing them to have a more organic discovery experience, because of the Similarity Search. Whether it was uploaded yesterday or uploaded 10 years ago, they’re gonna find it more easily.”

How Long did the Integration Take?

“Markus and Joshua were fantastic partners. Overall it took a few months to launch the ‘show similar songs’ button. But to be fair…could it have taken a shorter amount of time? Absolutely.”

“We did it in a very careful and methodical way. We put Cyanite under quite a serious magnifying glass, before committing and giving it out to our users.”

Check out the API docs to learn more about the process of integrating Cyanite into your system. 

  y -y – Where Is Marmoset Heading With All This?

“We are in a transitional period and we’re going to be considering full auto-tagging. There also always will be a human verification step, so it will always remain a human process. Compared to how we do things now, the idea is that Cyanite fits in a little earlier in the process as opposed to later.”

“We will start trying to find creative ways to utilize what is ultimately a very robust, very flexible amount of metadata not just to our benefit, but of course, to our end users’ benefit so that they can find the music they want faster.”

Marmoset AI Music Discovery – Long Story Short

Marmosets’ seamless integration of Cyanite into their workflow demonstrates the transformative impact of technology on the music industry – both facing the user front-end as well as internally improving workflows.
Combining trust in human processes and cutting-edge AI, Marmoset continues to define the future of music and AI music discovery.

Interested in trying out Cyanite for your company? Get in touch with us, or click the sign-up button below.

Many thanks to Alex Paguirigan for providing these amazing insights about how Marmoset uses Cyanite!

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How to Use AI Music Search for Your Music Catalog

How to Use AI Music Search for Your Music Catalog

by | Apr 2, 2024 | Music Industry, AI Analysis, How-to Guide, Resources

The burgeoning field of artificial intelligence has brought forth more tools than we can count, aiming to revolutionize the music industry. Amidst this landscape, AI-based music tagging and search stand out as proven technologies with quantifiable benefits for music companies worldwide.

This article aims to demystify the potential of AI music search and recommendation systems, offering insights to help music catalog owners and distributors determine the relevance of this technology for their businesses. Whether navigating a vast catalog or seeking innovative solutions for content discovery, this guide is tailored to your needs.

If you are also interested in Auto-Tagging music, please check out our article on The Power of Automatic Music Tagging with AI.

Assessing Your Needs

Understanding the suitability of AI music search begins with assessing your specific requirements. Consider the following prompts:

 

    • Has your catalog experienced significant growth from various sources?
    • Do a variety of different users access and search through your catalog?
    • Is sync a key aspect of your company?
    • Do you find yourself repeatedly using the same tracks while underutilizing others?

If you answer affirmatively to at least two of these questions, further exploration of AI music search is advisable.

Exploring Options

Two primary AI-driven search options dominate this landscape:

Similarity Search: Ideal for discovering tracks similar to a reference song, this feature aids sync and licensing teams worldwide. Whether finding similar songs in your catalog to worldwide hits or augmenting your song collection for your sync pitch, this tool enhances any music search.

Free Text Search (Searching by natural language): Utilizing text prompts, this search method facilitates music discovery for visual projects and instances where translating thoughts into keywords proves challenging. Its versatility extends from B2B applications, common in music licensing, to B2C scenarios, as demonstrated by Cyanite’s collaboration with streaming platforms like Sonu.

Lyrics Search: Enhance your search experience by delving into the lyrical content of songs. This feature adds a contextual dimension to sound-based searches, allowing users to find songs based on specific words or themes within their lyrics. Whether you’re searching for songs containing a particular word like “love” or exploring themes such as “falling in love,” this functionality offers a nuanced approach to music discovery.

If you want to test those AI music search options, you can easily create a free account for Cyanite’s web app and try it out.

Building vs. Buying

Choosing between building an in-house AI solution or licensing from an external provider hinges on several factors:

 

    • Do you possess an internal data science and development team?
    • Do you have a meticulously tagged library of at least 500,000 audios?
    • Can you allocate a significant budget for AI development (mid-six-figure sum) and ongoing updates?
    • Are you prepared to invest in monthly maintenance costs for a proprietary AI system (monthly five-figure sum)?

Building your AI may be viable if you answer at least two of these questions positively. Alternatively, partnering with an AI provider like Cyanite presents a compelling option for those lacking the resources or expertise for independent development.

To book an individual and free consultation with our experts, please follow the button below.

Free Consultation with our Experts

Long Story Short

AI music search offers a transformative solution for navigating the complexities of music catalogs, empowering businesses with enhanced efficiency and discovery capabilities. Whether leveraging similarity search or text-based prompts, the adoption of AI-driven technologies promises to redefine content discovery in the music industry.

Explore the possibilities of AI music search with Cyanite, and unlock the full potential of your music catalog today.

 

Your Cyanite Team.

Video Interview: How DJs, Artists, and Labels Can Use Cyanite’s AI

Video Interview: How DJs, Artists, and Labels Can Use Cyanite’s AI

by | Feb 9, 2024 | AI Analysis, Interview, Music Industry

Managing Music Catalogs with Cyanite

Following up on our presentation at Music Tech Germany, we recently did an Interview with Berlin House Music, discussing what tools we offer the music community here at Cyanite through our Web App. 

We summarized the most important topics to provide you with a short overview of what we talked about. Scroll down to check out the full 13-minute interview on YouTube.

Features for DJs, Artists, Labels:

    • Cyanite aims to empower DJs by assisting in set-building and suggesting tracks based on energy levels and various tags.
    • DJ features include a similarity search where users can find tracks with a similar vibe.
    • Using the Camelot wheel for harmonic mixing

Promotion Tools:

  • Labels and agencies use Cyanite for categorizing new music, finding suitable songs, and making product decisions.
  • Cyanite helps in selecting preview sections for music distribution to platforms like TikTok.
  • Users have successfully used Cyanite’s Augmented Keywords to instruct ChatGPT-3 in generating detailed song descriptions.

To find out more about this read our how-to blog article about it here.

Playlist Matching Feature (BETA):

    • Cyanite has just released a BETA feature to recommend playlists on Spotify that match a user’s uploaded song.
    • Future plans include recommending DJ crates and suggesting where in a playlist a song should be placed

 

Curious? Click here or on the video embedding above to watch the full interview on Berlin House Music’s Channel. 

In case you don’t have a Cyanite account yet, click the button below to Sign Up for free!

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The Future Of Catalog Management: A Rep(e)rtoir Revolution

The Future Of Catalog Management: A Rep(e)rtoir Revolution

by | Jan 26, 2024 | AI Analysis, Interview, Music Industry

Managing Music Catalogs with Cyanite

In a recent panel discussion hosted by Digital Music News and Reprtoir, industry experts, including Cyanite’s co-founder & CEO Markus Schwarzer, discussed the challenges that music professionals encounter in effectively managing music catalogs and assets.

We summed up the most important points from the over 1-hour long panel talk for you below.

The Issue with Subjective Metadata 

Juvenal Juarez from Gerencia 360 mentioned the difficulty music companies encounter in comprehensively knowing their entire catalog. This challenge is further complicated by the subjective nature of metadata tagging in music, where subjective interpretation often prevails. To tackle this, Danny Dunlap from Beacon Street Studios pointed out the advantage of leveraging AI-powered tools like Cyanite and Reprtoir to introduce a level of standardization, removing subjectivity from metadata tagging.

Shifting Power in the Industry

The incorporation of Cyanite in catalog management, as expressed by Markus from Cyanite, is transforming how professionals interact with their catalogs. The goal is to make catalog value accessible to all, not just large companies with massive resources. Lara Angelil from Reprtoir then emphasized that anyone can now harness their catalog’s potential without years of study.

Additionally, with our Free Text Search, we allow users to articulate their preferences in natural language and receive personalized recommendations. This aligns with the current demands of the industry, particularly in the realm of sync, where Cyanite helps to find the perfect track for any occasion.

A peek into the Future

Later in the panel, there was a focus on AI’s role in predicting trends and its potential impact on the discoverability of new artists. As the industry grapples with an influx of data and metadata, concerns about managing this information effectively are growing with it. Lara Angelil addressed these concerns, pointing out that scalability and the right tools, such as Reprtoir, which uses Cyanite, enable professionals to navigate the increasing volume of information and maintain transparency.

 

For a more in-depth exploration, feel free to check out the panel discussion replay here.
Find The Right Playlists for Your Music on Spotify – Free BETA

Find The Right Playlists for Your Music on Spotify – Free BETA

by | Dec 19, 2023 | AI Analysis, Announcement, Music Industry

Playlist Matching – Free BETA

With over 4 billion Spotify playlists, finding the right playlists for your music is not easy. With our new feature we focused on promotion – more specifically on pitching songs to DSP playlists, helping you to pick the right ones.

Introducing: Playlist Matching – find the right playlists for your music in seconds.

We’re here to help.

In 2018 Spotify opened up its gates to Artists, Managers, Labels, etc. to pitch their songs directly to curated playlists. This was a huge step towards making song promotion more accessible. But as always accessibility also means competition.

If you are curious about how to write the perfect pitch for your music, check out this blog post here.

Our new Playlist Matching tool will help you narrow down your choices as well as present you with suggestions that you probably would have missed out on due to the sheer mass of playlists out there.

How does it work?

First, you upload your track to your Cyanite account. The song now gets analyzed and tagged with metadata such as genre, mood, energy, character, and many more.

Then you head over to the Playlist Matching tab on the sidebar menu. Next, select your song, and in the blink of an eye, 10 playlists that match the essence of your song will pop up below. 

Start finding the right playlists for your music.

New technology is often gatekept and only tested by selected people until it is perfected and rolled out to a wider community. We decided to do the exact opposite.

Discover the Right Spotify Playlists Faster

Get ten playlist matches per song and use that information to pitch your music to the curators (you can find out who is behind the playlist by clicking on the name next to the playlist image on Spotify. Then get in touch via social media). 

Find Your Target Audience, Fellow Artists, and Inspiration

With Cyanite Playlist Matching you can better identify the musical bubbles your music resonates with. Great for playlist marketing, artist collaborations, or getting inspiration for your next hit. 

Explore New Music Through the World of Playlists

Use your favorite tracks and discover new music in Spotify’s treasure trove of human-curated playlists.

The free BETA is open now. 

If you do not have an account yet, sign up for free down below and start now. Our company is made by music lovers for music lovers. We want to grow with you – so as long as your feedback is constructive, we want to hear it.

Help us help you to find the right playlists for your music and improve our services for you. Become a part of the journey.

Your Cyanite Team.

 

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