8 ms·

This is a business I know well. Jukedeck is an example of how founders and investors do not conduct appropriate market research. There is a limited market deman

This is a business I know well. Jukedeck is an example of how founders and investors do not conduct appropriate market research. There is a limited market demand for low-cost royalty-free music for videos. One could argue there is an oversupply* of royalty-free music relative to buyers. The quality is not good enough to disrupt the billion dollar Production music industry that is top heavy, a relative small amount of creators at the top get the majority of the money, the rest compete for the little that is left. Jukedeck has raised enough money ($3million #) to be around for a few years if they control their burn rate. But Jukedeck in its current form, is just another music startup destined for the Deadpool. (http://techcrunch.com/tag/deadpool/ http://techcrunch.com/tag/deadpool/) * http://lmgtfy.com/?q=royalty+free+music http://lmgtfy.com/?q=royalty+free+music # http://www.businessweekly.co.uk/tech-trail/investment-tree/digital-music-provider-raises-fresh-%C2%A32m http://www.businessweekly.co.uk/tech-trail/investment-tree/d...

underwater 11y ago
I would use this for my personal videos. I've had videos taken down from Facebook before because, even though I was just sharing it with friends, I used a track that was protected by copyright. Being able to construct a track with the right feel without worrying about copyright would be amazing for a simple video editor or on something like Instagram.
- rockarage 11y ago
  Sure, but most people want to use popular music, as a result the most popular video editor for istagram has licensed popular music* from the majors. This is not a novel business. *http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/storytelling-social-network-flipagram-signs-music-licensing-deals-with-majors/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/storytelling-socia...
  - underwater 11y ago
    Interesting. That doesn't scale though, because you can't upload the same clip to YouTube without it being flagged. Having rights to backing music is not great as a differentiator for a social network.
- morninj 11y ago
  "Just sharing with friends" is still copyright infringement. The owner of the copyright--not you--gets to decide how the work is reproduced and distributed, unless you have a defense like fair use. (I'm not saying this is always a good thing; it's just how the law works.)
  - schoen 11y ago
    It's not Facebook's responsibility to enforce this absent a complaint from the copyright holder.
  - underwater 11y ago
    Yeah it is, but in the scheme of things it's pretty benign. I couldn't purchase the rights to use the song even if I wanted to, and I'm only using a portion of the track, so I'm not actually denying them income.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  Yeah, but you're probably not willing to pay enough to make it profitable if your videos are for personal entertainment only rather than aiming at any kind of significant audience.
  - underwater 11y ago
    From the data I've found Pandora pays around 0.2 cents per stream. I'd be more than willing to pay that (or even 10x as much) to use a track on a video that a couple of hundred friends might see.
apinstein 11y ago
We have had this problem, even with commercially-purchased royalty-free music. The idea of getting generated music that will never trip "Content ID" is nice, since having our customers' tracks pulled is an un-solvable problem for our team and it's really painful from a support perspective. Plus, the idea that I've paid for legit copyright use and I still have to deal with takedown BS is doubly frustrating.
- rockarage 11y ago
  Your case is an exception, the majority of royal-free music companies do not police their content this way.
bstrong 11y ago
Wow, that was harsh. If startups were assigned to the Deadpool based solely on whether their 1.0 products were ready to immediately disrupt billion dollar industries, there wouldn't be _any_ successful startups out there. Personally, when I see a team of people who are passionate about what they are doing create something new and interesting, I like to cheer them on. I think the technology is interesting and cool. Even if it isn't marketable in current form (what 1.0 product is), I wish them the best in iterating on it until it is.
- rockarage 11y ago
  What's harsh is burning through 3 million dollars while you're trying to figure out what's wrong. If my statments leads to a major change that saves the company that is a good thing.
  - strayptr 11y ago
    3 million dollars is nothing. It took a million dollars to make a single very low-quality video game, circa 2008. Salaries are expensive. The investment model is set up to let founders "burn through" money while they explore new approaches to old industries. The investors don't really care that the money is lost. To be an investor, you have to assume 9 out of 10 of your investments will be write-offs. So if you're not defending the investors' money, and if the founders are happy doing this, then why are you intentionally being harsh? Let them do their thing. Yeah they might fail, but so what? It's the only path to success. It's not really productive to try to save people or companies via internet comments. You're more likely to demoralize them than to change their minds. Unfortunately, demoralization is often someone's hidden motive.
    - rockarage 11y ago
      I have actually helped a company where our initial interaction was via an internet comment, so don't make assumptions. Stating market reality is not being harsh, there is an abundant supply of royalty free music available at a very low cost or for free. If you're demoralized because someone states the facts of a competitive market than that is very unfortunate and you're not really fit to be an entrepreneur in a highly competitive market. From experience, working on a product that is failing is very demoralizing. I actually will like to see them do something novel and great with their technology. Moreover there is great ideas* in this thread that can actually help the company. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10707389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10707389
joeyspn 11y ago
On the other side, if the generated tracks are 100% original, this tool could be of invaluable help for music producers looking for quick inspiration. As an amateur music producer I'd be willing to pay for this if MIDI export is added. I think the project is great, maybe they haven't found the right niche just yet. Hint: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=midi+loops http://lmgtfy.com/?q=midi+loops
- rockarage 11y ago
  That's a very interesting target, although It's doubtful it will meet the needs of their vc investors. It is an interesting project, but it is in the wrong target market.
  - joeyspn 11y ago
    They just need to make some numbers (and as you pointed some customer development). The music industry is pretty big and has many niches. I'm 100% sure many companies would LOVE to add AI composing capabilities to their DAWs/VSTis/AUs... including Apple in Logic Pro. They could try to license the technology.
    - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
      If you're aiming for the musician market, I'm 100% sure you're wrong. There's some basic algo-comp in Logic and Ableton already. But generally, musicians really hate the idea of having a machine writing all of their music for them. This even applies to musicians who only work with loops, and to DJs who only work with complete tracks. I think there are business models for algo-comp, but this isn't the best one. I'm not sure JukeDeck is necessarily heading for the deadpool, but it's maybe 50:50 at best. Also, the production values on good stock music are very high - higher than here. Try https://www.shockwave-sound.com/ https://www.shockwave-sound.com/ for some examples. I think JukeDeck isn't quite up to the lowest quality tracks on there, and it's a very long way short of the better tracks.
      - joeyspn 11y ago
andrewfong 11y ago
You're not considering a handful of other variables here: (1) Convenience - There's limited market demand for royalty-free music that you have to manually edit and sort through yourself. By virtue of making it simple enough for consumers (vs. professionals) to use, the market got a lot bigger. By way of comparison, you could have said that there was limited market demand for mobile apps prior to the App Store. But the convenience the App Store offered with respect to finding and installing apps made all the difference. (2) Licensing - This is proof of concept for the overall technology. You could view Jukedeck as a play to simply generate the sort of interest you need to get larger players interested in licensing tech, rather than an end-game in and of itself. E.g. you could imagine Apple licensing the tech for use in iMovie. (3) Legal risk - It's one thing to say some random music track on the Internet is royalty free. It's quite another to prove it. There's no easy way to guarantee that the supposed original author of a track didn't copy it from someone else. This might seem like an edge case, but per the above points, if Jukedeck licensed their tech to companies like Apple, those legal issues become much bigger deals. Algorithmic music simplifies the legal question quite a bit.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  3 could be the big one, but how do you guarantee that even algorthmic music isn't infringing given the current legal system?
nl 11y ago
Wow. I think this is the perfect example of "failure of imagination" GoPro is a $2.5B company based around low cost equipment for amateur film makers. They produce film editors that let you edit your films around per-licensed sound tracks. Let me say that again - you make your film around the sound track they supply. The opportunity for Jukedeck isn't competing with the thousands of individual composers 1-on-1. It is building a platform that generates sound tracks automatically, and selling the platform as software both to end users and sub-licensing it to companies like GoPro.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  But that's how most editors work anyway, even Hollywood ones - if they don't have a score to work with they take temp music from some film they already like and later commission something similar. I'm not sure why you think this is such a radical concept.
  - nl 11y ago
    Of course the concept isn't radical. The difference is that it is suddenly a scalable business. At the moment the per-unit cost of per film is constant. If software "composes" the music then the per-unit cost drops with each additional user. That's the radical thing.
    - anigbrowl 11y ago
      At the moment the per-unit cost of per film is constant. But it's not. There's considerable spread in the price of music depending on the quality, specificity, popularity, and licensability* of what you want to buy. * up to a particular number of copies made, or with restrictions on sublicensing or other contractual factors.
      - nl 11y ago
        per-unit = per-film in this case. You make a new film (which includes the entire range of things from Hollywood films, to pro-Youtubers to films you share with a couple of people). For music you can 1) Get custom music written specifically for your film. This is usually expensive (unless you do it yourself, or know someone to do it for you) but has the advantage (if done well) of matching exactly what you want for your film 2) Find an existing piece of music and license it. This has variable costs (or maybe free), but won't be written specifically for your film and possibly will also be used elsewhere. 3) Use "template" music included in whatever software tool you are using. AI-generated music has the advantage of (1) but the cost structure of (3). It'll be a long time before it is useful for Hollywood films. But for Youtubers it is a completely different story.
antidamage 11y ago
I disagree. I think the market is HUGE. Content creation is a big deal.
- reitanqild 11y ago
  Agree to some degree, -I jokingly say that there is a lot of music that would be improved if the artist could just shut up while performing.
lifeformed 11y ago
The point of this isn't having infinite royalty-free music, it's the technology. The royalty-free music part is just a easily-implemented, temporary application that gives it a business purpose, while they try to build up the technology into something great. There's a lot more applications to good music generation than royalty-free music.
isaiahg 11y ago
I really don't agree. I like the interface and it's simple. I make indie games, but I suck at music creation. As of today I'm a paying member, just bought some menu music.
- edrex1 11y ago
  Thanks so much - really glad to hear you made some music on our platform. I'd love to see the game you use it in when it's finished!
- LoSboccacc 11y ago
  that's weird, there's plenty musician out there creating real pieces, with movements and all, and putting them online as CC-SA why didn't you go for one of those sources? honest question, as gf is having the same problem sourcing music for her channel
  - pmontra 11y ago
    Maybe because it shortens the loop: 10 minutes to chose the music vs days. Maybe it's not good enough for the final product but it could be good enough for testing and development.

underwater 11y ago

I would use this for my personal videos. I've had videos taken down from Facebook before because, even though I was just sharing it with friends, I used a track that was protected by copyright. Being able to construct a track with the right feel without worrying about copyright would be amazing for a simple video editor or on something like Instagram.

rockarage 11y ago
Sure, but most people want to use popular music, as a result the most popular video editor for istagram has licensed popular music* from the majors. This is not a novel business. *http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/storytelling-social-network-flipagram-signs-music-licensing-deals-with-majors/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/storytelling-socia...
- underwater 11y ago
  Interesting. That doesn't scale though, because you can't upload the same clip to YouTube without it being flagged. Having rights to backing music is not great as a differentiator for a social network.
morninj 11y ago
"Just sharing with friends" is still copyright infringement. The owner of the copyright--not you--gets to decide how the work is reproduced and distributed, unless you have a defense like fair use. (I'm not saying this is always a good thing; it's just how the law works.)
- schoen 11y ago
  It's not Facebook's responsibility to enforce this absent a complaint from the copyright holder.
- underwater 11y ago
  Yeah it is, but in the scheme of things it's pretty benign. I couldn't purchase the rights to use the song even if I wanted to, and I'm only using a portion of the track, so I'm not actually denying them income.
anigbrowl 11y ago
Yeah, but you're probably not willing to pay enough to make it profitable if your videos are for personal entertainment only rather than aiming at any kind of significant audience.
- underwater 11y ago
  From the data I've found Pandora pays around 0.2 cents per stream. I'd be more than willing to pay that (or even 10x as much) to use a track on a video that a couple of hundred friends might see.

apinstein 11y ago

We have had this problem, even with commercially-purchased royalty-free music. The idea of getting generated music that will never trip "Content ID" is nice, since having our customers' tracks pulled is an un-solvable problem for our team and it's really painful from a support perspective. Plus, the idea that I've paid for legit copyright use and I still have to deal with takedown BS is doubly frustrating.

rockarage 11y ago
Your case is an exception, the majority of royal-free music companies do not police their content this way.

bstrong 11y ago

Wow, that was harsh. If startups were assigned to the Deadpool based solely on whether their 1.0 products were ready to immediately disrupt billion dollar industries, there wouldn't be _any_ successful startups out there. Personally, when I see a team of people who are passionate about what they are doing create something new and interesting, I like to cheer them on. I think the technology is interesting and cool. Even if it isn't marketable in current form (what 1.0 product is), I wish them the best in iterating on it until it is.

rockarage 11y ago
What's harsh is burning through 3 million dollars while you're trying to figure out what's wrong. If my statments leads to a major change that saves the company that is a good thing.
- strayptr 11y ago
  3 million dollars is nothing. It took a million dollars to make a single very low-quality video game, circa 2008. Salaries are expensive. The investment model is set up to let founders "burn through" money while they explore new approaches to old industries. The investors don't really care that the money is lost. To be an investor, you have to assume 9 out of 10 of your investments will be write-offs. So if you're not defending the investors' money, and if the founders are happy doing this, then why are you intentionally being harsh? Let them do their thing. Yeah they might fail, but so what? It's the only path to success. It's not really productive to try to save people or companies via internet comments. You're more likely to demoralize them than to change their minds. Unfortunately, demoralization is often someone's hidden motive.
  - rockarage 11y ago
    I have actually helped a company where our initial interaction was via an internet comment, so don't make assumptions. Stating market reality is not being harsh, there is an abundant supply of royalty free music available at a very low cost or for free. If you're demoralized because someone states the facts of a competitive market than that is very unfortunate and you're not really fit to be an entrepreneur in a highly competitive market. From experience, working on a product that is failing is very demoralizing. I actually will like to see them do something novel and great with their technology. Moreover there is great ideas* in this thread that can actually help the company. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10707389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10707389

joeyspn 11y ago

On the other side, if the generated tracks are 100% original, this tool could be of invaluable help for music producers looking for quick inspiration. As an amateur music producer I'd be willing to pay for this if MIDI export is added. I think the project is great, maybe they haven't found the right niche just yet. Hint: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=midi+loops http://lmgtfy.com/?q=midi+loops

rockarage 11y ago
That's a very interesting target, although It's doubtful it will meet the needs of their vc investors. It is an interesting project, but it is in the wrong target market.
- joeyspn 11y ago
  They just need to make some numbers (and as you pointed some customer development). The music industry is pretty big and has many niches. I'm 100% sure many companies would LOVE to add AI composing capabilities to their DAWs/VSTis/AUs... including Apple in Logic Pro. They could try to license the technology.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    If you're aiming for the musician market, I'm 100% sure you're wrong. There's some basic algo-comp in Logic and Ableton already. But generally, musicians really hate the idea of having a machine writing all of their music for them. This even applies to musicians who only work with loops, and to DJs who only work with complete tracks. I think there are business models for algo-comp, but this isn't the best one. I'm not sure JukeDeck is necessarily heading for the deadpool, but it's maybe 50:50 at best. Also, the production values on good stock music are very high - higher than here. Try https://www.shockwave-sound.com/ https://www.shockwave-sound.com/ for some examples. I think JukeDeck isn't quite up to the lowest quality tracks on there, and it's a very long way short of the better tracks.
    - joeyspn 11y ago

andrewfong 11y ago

You're not considering a handful of other variables here: (1) Convenience - There's limited market demand for royalty-free music that you have to manually edit and sort through yourself. By virtue of making it simple enough for consumers (vs. professionals) to use, the market got a lot bigger. By way of comparison, you could have said that there was limited market demand for mobile apps prior to the App Store. But the convenience the App Store offered with respect to finding and installing apps made all the difference. (2) Licensing - This is proof of concept for the overall technology. You could view Jukedeck as a play to simply generate the sort of interest you need to get larger players interested in licensing tech, rather than an end-game in and of itself. E.g. you could imagine Apple licensing the tech for use in iMovie. (3) Legal risk - It's one thing to say some random music track on the Internet is royalty free. It's quite another to prove it. There's no easy way to guarantee that the supposed original author of a track didn't copy it from someone else. This might seem like an edge case, but per the above points, if Jukedeck licensed their tech to companies like Apple, those legal issues become much bigger deals. Algorithmic music simplifies the legal question quite a bit.

danieltillett 11y ago
3 could be the big one, but how do you guarantee that even algorthmic music isn't infringing given the current legal system?

nl 11y ago

Wow. I think this is the perfect example of "failure of imagination" GoPro is a $2.5B company based around low cost equipment for amateur film makers. They produce film editors that let you edit your films around per-licensed sound tracks. Let me say that again - you make your film around the sound track they supply. The opportunity for Jukedeck isn't competing with the thousands of individual composers 1-on-1. It is building a platform that generates sound tracks automatically, and selling the platform as software both to end users and sub-licensing it to companies like GoPro.

anigbrowl 11y ago
But that's how most editors work anyway, even Hollywood ones - if they don't have a score to work with they take temp music from some film they already like and later commission something similar. I'm not sure why you think this is such a radical concept.
- nl 11y ago
  Of course the concept isn't radical. The difference is that it is suddenly a scalable business. At the moment the per-unit cost of per film is constant. If software "composes" the music then the per-unit cost drops with each additional user. That's the radical thing.
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    At the moment the per-unit cost of per film is constant. But it's not. There's considerable spread in the price of music depending on the quality, specificity, popularity, and licensability* of what you want to buy. * up to a particular number of copies made, or with restrictions on sublicensing or other contractual factors.
    - nl 11y ago
      per-unit = per-film in this case. You make a new film (which includes the entire range of things from Hollywood films, to pro-Youtubers to films you share with a couple of people). For music you can 1) Get custom music written specifically for your film. This is usually expensive (unless you do it yourself, or know someone to do it for you) but has the advantage (if done well) of matching exactly what you want for your film 2) Find an existing piece of music and license it. This has variable costs (or maybe free), but won't be written specifically for your film and possibly will also be used elsewhere. 3) Use "template" music included in whatever software tool you are using. AI-generated music has the advantage of (1) but the cost structure of (3). It'll be a long time before it is useful for Hollywood films. But for Youtubers it is a completely different story.

antidamage 11y ago

I disagree. I think the market is HUGE. Content creation is a big deal.

reitanqild 11y ago
Agree to some degree, -I jokingly say that there is a lot of music that would be improved if the artist could just shut up while performing.

lifeformed 11y ago

The point of this isn't having infinite royalty-free music, it's the technology. The royalty-free music part is just a easily-implemented, temporary application that gives it a business purpose, while they try to build up the technology into something great. There's a lot more applications to good music generation than royalty-free music.

isaiahg 11y ago

I really don't agree. I like the interface and it's simple. I make indie games, but I suck at music creation. As of today I'm a paying member, just bought some menu music.

edrex1 11y ago
Thanks so much - really glad to hear you made some music on our platform. I'd love to see the game you use it in when it's finished!
LoSboccacc 11y ago
that's weird, there's plenty musician out there creating real pieces, with movements and all, and putting them online as CC-SA why didn't you go for one of those sources? honest question, as gf is having the same problem sourcing music for her channel
- pmontra 11y ago
  Maybe because it shortens the loop: 10 minutes to chose the music vs days. Maybe it's not good enough for the final product but it could be good enough for testing and development.