Hangout is a new service that wants to make enjoying music more of a social experience. The platform, from Turntable Labs, is available on iOS, Android and the Web. At launch, Hangout offers more than 100 million songs, available to stream globally as a result of deals with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group as well as indie rights group Merlin. Users can select an avatar and invite friends to their personal ‘hangout’ space, taking turns playing songs from their favorite artists in the virtual DJ booth. Continue reading Hangout Is a New Social Platform with Music Listening Rooms

Meta Platforms is releasing AudioCraft, a generative AI framework that creates “high-quality,” “realistic” audio and music from text prompts. AudioCraft consists of three models: MusicGen, AudioGen and EnCodec, all of which Meta announced it is open-sourcing. Released in June, MusicGen was trained on Meta-owned and licensed music, and generates music from text prompts, while AudioGen, which was trained on public domain samples, generates sound effects (like honking horns and barking dogs) from text prompts. The EnCodec decoder allows “higher quality music generation with fewer artifacts,” according to Meta. Continue reading Meta’s AudioCraft Turns Words into Music with Generative AI

Meta Platforms has debuted what’s being called “ChatGPT for audio.” MusicGen is an AI music generator that can create tunes from natural language or song snippets. The company says MusicGen was trained on 20,000 hours of music, including 10,000 hours of “high-quality” licensed songs and 390,000 instrumental tracks. Meta released MusicGen on GitHub this past weekend, and is currently demoing the app on Facebook’s Hugging Face page. Visitors can generate tunes by describing the sound they want. Among Meta’s prompts: “80s driving pop song with heavy drums and synth pads in the background.” Continue reading Meta’s MusicGen AI Works with Language and Song Prompts

Universal Music Group, largest of the major music labels, just closed an investment deal with Rockbot, a virtual jukebox service that provides music to bars, restaurants and other locations. Through Rockbot, businesses can play licensed music while customers use a mobile app to check in and interact with the songs. One perk is the ability for customers to vote on which music will be played. Rockbot expects to use the new funding to expand its reach throughout the U.S. Continue reading Rockbot: Universal Music Invests in Social Jukebox Service

What if every radio station was searchable and you could look up a song you wanted to listen to, pick one of the stations it was currently playing on, and listen? Radio Search Engine, a new venture by entrepreneur Michael Robertson, allows just that. The site indexes around 40,000 radio stations in real-time and allows users to tune in from the Web. Currently in beta mode, Radio Search Engine essentially turns thousands of radio stations into a searchable music jukebox. Continue reading New Search Engine Gets Its Streaming Music from Live Radio

Although the streaming music market is still relatively new, there is considerable consumer demand for a digital radio-style option. While jukebox services such as Spotify and music stores from Apple and Google receive a significant amount of attention, the market for Pandora has been steadily growing. Pandora continues to promote its unique radio-style approach as a great way to enjoy music in spite of growing competition from other online services. Continue reading Pandora Believes Radio Experience Will Beat Jukebox Services