Jukedeck was a British technology company founded in 2012. It built a website that let users create royalty-free music using

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

History

Ed Newton-Rex started building the first version of Jukedeck’s

algorithmic composition Algorithmic composition is the technique of using algorithms to create music. Algorithms (or, at the very least, formal sets of rules) have been used to compose music for centuries; the procedures used to plot voice-leading in Western counterpo ...

system in 2010, and founded the company in 2012. In 2014, Patrick Stobbs left

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to join as co-founder. Stobbs and Newton-Rex had met at the age of eight when they were both choristers in King's College Choir, and they had later been at

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

together. In 2015, Jukedeck launched a website that let people generate original, royalty-free music for use in videos. Users could set parameters including genre, instruments and duration, and specific climactic moments in the music; they could then generate a song in around 20 seconds that they could download for non-commercial or commercial use, with prices ranging from free for personal projects to $199 per song to purchase the copyright. Newton-Rex’s original

program was a rule-based system in which note and chord probabilities were hard-coded. By 2017, this had been replaced with a two-tiered approach, in which

artificial neural networks In machine learning, a neural network (also artificial neural network or neural net, abbreviated ANN or NN) is a computational model inspired by the structure and functions of biological neural networks. A neural network consists of connected ...

generated

musical compositions Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are call ...

which were converted to audio using an automated

music production A record producer or music producer is a music creating project's overall supervisor whose responsibilities can involve a range of creative and technical leadership roles. Typically the job involves hands-on oversight of recording sessions; ensu ...

program. Music could be generated in a number of genres, from

folk Folk or Folks may refer to: Sociology *Nation *People * Folklore ** Folk art ** Folk dance ** Folk hero ** Folk horror ** Folk music *** Folk metal *** Folk punk *** Folk rock ** Folk religion * Folk taxonomy Arts, entertainment, and media * Fo ...

electronica Electronica is both a broad group of electronic-based music styles intended for listening rather than strictly for dancing and a music scene that came to prominence in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the term is mos ...

. The website was used to create over 1 million pieces of music, and brands that used it included

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UKTV UKTV Media Limited, trading as UKTV, is a British multi-channel broadcaster, which, since 2019, has been wholly owned by BBC Studios (formerly BBC Worldwide), a commercial subsidiary of the BBC. It was formed on 1 November 1992 through a join ...

, and the

Natural History Museum, London The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum (Lo ...

. In 2018, Jukedeck’s technology was used to compose the music for

K-pop K-pop (; an abbreviation of "Korean popular music") is a form of popular music originating in South Korea. It emerged in the 1990s as a form of youth subculture, with Korean musicians taking influence from Western Electronic dance music, danc ...

girl group

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for a performance at a concert at the Blue Square Concert Hall in

Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...

. Singer

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also used Jukedeck to create backing tracks for her songs. Jukedeck grew to a team of 20 people and raised £2.5M in funding. In 2019, it was acquired by

ByteDance ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Haidian, Beijing, and incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Founded by Zhang Yiming, Liang Rubo, and a team of others in 2012, ByteDance developed the video-sharing ap ...

, the parent company of

TikTok TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin (), is a social media and Short-form content, short-form online video platform owned by Chinese Internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration f ...

, for an undisclosed sum.

Awards

* Winner of Vator Splash London in 2013. * Winner of the LeWeb startup competition in 2014. * Winner of Pitch@Palace in 2015. * Winner of the Startup Battlefield at

TechCrunch Disrupt TechCrunch is an American global online newspaper focusing on topics regarding high-tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the co ...

in 2015. * Winner of an Innovation Lion at the

Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity (formerly the International Advertising Festival) is a global event for those working in creative communications, advertising, and related fields. It is considered the largest gathering of the ...

in 2016. * Winner of Hottest Media/Entertainment Startup at The Europas in 2017. * Winner of Startup of the Year at the

BIMA Bima city ( Bima: ''Mbojo'') is a coastal city on the east of the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia's province of West Nusa Tenggara. It is the largest city on the island of Sumbawa, with a population of 142,443 at the 2010 censusBiro Pusat Stati ...

Awards in 2017.

References

{{reflist British companies established in 2012 Companies based in London