SoundOut unveils unique semantic music search technology for catalogue owners
SoundOut, Slicethepie’s analytics and market insight service, today announced the launch of SoundOut Search, a uniquely powerful music semantic search technology for catalogue owners.
SoundOut Search enables users to search a music catalogue using an entire music brief, a free text description or a reference track and receive a set of the closest matching tracks in the catalogue being searched. It is an easy-to-use tool that helps optimise synch and licensing opportunities by effectively mining and monetising the entire catalogue. In doing so, it compliments employee catalogue knowledge, locks that knowledge into the organisation and enhances the value of the asset.
The technology is being showcased at www.soundoutsearch.com. The 5,000 tracks in this catalogue are unsigned tracks that have received almost 500,000 crowdsourced reviews through the SoundOut service.
David Courtier-Dutton, CEO, said: “Music search is a notoriously tough nut to crack with existing catalogue navigation typically resembling an iTunes experience - largely based around keywords and metadata. SoundOut Search is closer to a Google experience and represents a major leap forward in semantic search for music.”
Daniel Spencer, SoundOut Search SVP, commented: “Music is emotive, personal and subjective and, until now, it has been difficult to label tracks in a way that enables intuitive music search. Because SoundOut Search understands user driven description in context as well as emotional nuances, it delivers a better experience for the user and ultimately enhanced opportunities for a far wider range of artists.”
As sales revenues continue to shrink across the recorded music industry there is an increasing focus on better monetising core catalogue assets. Some catalogue owners are unfamiliar with up to 85% of the copyrights they own. In larger catalogues this can stretch to hundreds of thousands or even millions of tracks, meaning lucrative commercial opportunities are being missed on a regular basis. SoundOut Search is currently trialling with a number of major catalogue owners in the UK and USA.
Key features of SoundOut Search include:
- The ability to search using a complete music brief of any length or a free text description of the music required;
- a ‘more’ button beside each track which refines the search by using the selected track as a reference track to perform a new search across the catalogue - this delivers a ‘Pandora’ like result;
- the option to find an artist that sounds like a well known artist by simply entering the artist name into the search field;
- the ability to upload any track as a reference track to get the closest matches; and
- searching by artist name, track title or lyric.
A key benefit is that this fuzzy matching semantic technology avoids the intrinsic subjectivity of ‘tagging’, so rather than requiring exact matches, it instead returns the closest matches available within the catalogue.
SoundOut has secured exclusive global rights for the music industry to the underlying technology that powers SoundOut Search which has been developed by CFL Software (www.cflsoftware.com) over the past 15 years and is already used in multiple commercial applications in other markets around the world.
David Woolls, CEO of CFL said: “Being asked to come up with a real time, dynamic program to read briefs, work out what sort of music is required, match that with descriptions for thousands of tracks and deliver music that fits the brief is definitely our most unusual challenge to date, and it has required considerable innovation to achieve.”
About SoundOut
SoundOut (www.soundout.com), wholly owned by Slicethepie, is the market leading online consumer insight and analytics service for recording artists, record labels and, increasingly, radio stations. Sold directly, and through a wide range of partners (IODA, InGrooves, TuneCore, Nimbit etc), it provides detailed and accurate reports generated directly from consumer feedback on new tracks (SoundOut Pro Report sample). In addition, it offers artists exposure to a range of commercial opportunities as well as providing the information artists need to better target their marketing activities. SoundOut Search (www.soundoutsearch.com), in trial with certain labels and publishers, offers a unique semantic search tool enabling publishers and sync agents to search and navigate music catalogues using full music briefs or reference tracks.
About Slicethepie
Slicethepie (www.slicethepie.com) is a multiple award-winning financing platform for the music industry that enables new and established artists to raise money directly from music fans and investors. To date, fans have financed 28 artists including Scars on 45 who have gone on to sign a multi album record deal with Atlantic Records in the US.
CEO David Courtier-Dutton was recently named as a finalist in the 2010 CNBC European Business Leaders Awards.
About CFL Software
CFL Software (www.cflsoftware.com) is a provider of semantic search solutions. CFL’s semantic indexes model the way in which humans communicate their ideas and feelings. The search tools allow users to describe exactly what they want, rather than being restricted to keywords, categories and phrases, and getting very precise results as a consequence. The technology has evolved from the close comparison of documents required for plagiarism detection, in which area CFL’s products are used by major organisations worldwide.
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Alastair Keeble Grace Hammond
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