Swedish Start-Up Amuse Uses Machine Learning to Pay Musicians
*By Tracey Cheek*
Swedish startup Amuse looking to re-invent the record label through machine learning.
The company, the world's first mobile record company, just launched a new feature called 'Fast Forward' that uses data to predict and pay artists for their future royalties.
"We allow artists around the world to use our digital distribution service," explained Co-Founder and CEO Diego Farias. "They upload the music to us, we deliver it to Apple ($AAPL), Spotify ($SPOT), etc. Whatever earnings they get they keep, so 100 percent of what they make."
Farias, who was previously the digital sales and marketing manager at Warner Music Sweden, said that the company is currently relying on over 36 billion data points to do the calculations needed to get artists get up to six months of advance royalties. Amuse, which has been running trials since before December, feels confident about its algorithms. (Disclosure: Amuse is backed by Raine Ventures, which is also an investor in Cheddar)
"We use all of the consumption data that gets generated to create predictions of where a song is going," said Farias. "Music is to some extent fairly reliable in how it moves, and we have some of the best data scientists in the world in terms of music data, so i feel really confident in that area."
Amuse has seen success with the artists on its platform so far, with some of them using Fast Forward to pay anything from the electric bills to instruments. Farias said artists can use their royalties how and when they want, without the hassles that come with a contract, and that growth of the company is happening organically. Being the only mobile-based service of this kind has its perks.
"This offer has never existed before for do-it-yourself artists or independent artists," said Farias. "Advances is usually one of those services that major companies like Warner, Universal, or Sony would be able to give their artist; it's usually a fairly arbitrary number ーit's difficult to understand where the project is going. Amuse comes at this problem form an entirely different angle. So now we're opening up the gates to something that has previously been for an exclusive few and we're making that available for do-it-yourself artists around the world. "
Amuse was founded in Stockholm in 2015, and The Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am joined the co-founder team in 2017. The company has its first gold and platinum albums in Europe and is looking to move into Latin America.
"Growth for us looks like spreading the gospel of Amuse," said Farias. "We think that between the different aspects of Amuse we have, with the record company being one, with distribution service being a second, and with fast forward being a third, we have a value proposition for every do-it-yourself artist around the world."
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/swedish-music-start-up-amuse-uses-machine-learning-to-pay-musicians).
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