Robot rhythms: the startups using AI to shake up the music business

When you think of great songwriting teams, music and artificial intelligence aren’t an obvious mix, but a number of startups are bringing smart tech into the studio

Mention the words “AI” and “music” in the same sentence and you may attract some tuts and eye rolls, as people wax lyrical about the good old days. If robots are making our call centre jobs redundant, then at least let us have our Sunday jam sessions.

But music, like anything else, has to move on: “In a world of personalisation and on-demand services, music is one of very few remaining static artefacts,” says Ken Lythgoe, head of business development at creative AI technology company MXX. The company has created what it says is the world’s first AI tech that allows individual users to instantly edit music to fit their own video footage, complete with rises and fades.