New business line launches the sale of a world first in the field of music recognition and recommendation software
Group subsidiary m2any GmbH, 100% of the shares of which the group acquired during the fiscal year just ended, has been trading since October 2007 under the corporate name mufin GmbH, with its registered office in Berlin. With mufin GmbH, the group is setting up a new line of business in order to establish itself as the leading authority in the field of music recognition and recommendation. In order to more transparently structure our investments and business performance in this area, all business activities in this regard are being bundled within mufin GmbH.
With its patented AudioID functionality, developed by the Fraunhofer IDMT, mufin GmbH holds the exclusive rights to one of the most sophisticated technologies for music recognition and recommendation. As a component of the MPEG7 standard, AudioID guarantees optimum support in administering large music databases.
mufin's music recognition initially permits individual music titles to be quickly identified. Thanks to AudioID, only a few seconds of the audio material are required in order to supply the user with the metadata for a particular piece. mufin GmbH's recognition technology is significantly more robust in this regard than the comparable functions of other software providers. Even in the presence of high levels of acoustic distortion, audio signals can be recognised and the accompanying metadata supplied in each case.
However, attributes such as titles, album names and artists don't yet say very much about the music itself. Even categorising it within various genres such as Pop music, Rock or Classical music, may be nothing more than a rough approximation, often leading to misunderstandings. If a user is looking for music that suits his mood at the moment, this type of information in text form will only be of limited use. There is thus a need here for a search function oriented not to the description of music, but rather to its substantive content. mufin GmbH's AudioID music recommendation function is precisely such a technology for finding music.
Of course, various methods of music recommendation already exist, but they are all based on the prior evaluation by other people. mufin GmbH makes use of a technical analysis of the music itself, by which up to 30 audio parameters such as, for example, rhythm or tempo are compared. The advantage is obvious: it is possible to give a recommendation for every piece of music without it ever having been heard before by a third party. This saves time and resources. Furthermore, the evaluation of the music is performed on the basis of musical parameters, and is independent of the personal taste of an evaluator, because it is based exclusively on the analysis of technical parameters.
The AudioID technology is marketed in the following way:
Music recognition
The technology for identifying audio material is used in the following scenarios:
- identification of music by the consumer by means of a web-linked terminal that facilitates the sale of the respective titles
- automated logging of broadcast audio material in radio and television programmes, e.g. for monitoring broadcasting time agreements, ensuring royalty payments and for statistical analyses (chart analysis)
- automated search for audio material that infringes copyright
- linkage of audio material to metadata, such as titles, song texts or web links.
As a basic principle, the customer will pay a licence fee on a per-search basis for the use of the AudioID identification technology.
Music recommendation
mufin GmbH's AudioID music recommendation function is marketed in the following way:
mufin Internet services
The mufin online portal serves two of the most important topics on the Internet: music and social networking. At www.mufin.com Users can make use of the AudioID recommendation technology to find new music on mufin and, at the same time, to meet new people, under the slogan: Find music with friends, find friends with music. The user can directly purchase the music found or relevant artists' further products such as concert tickets and DVD's, via linked web shops. mufin GmbH's goal is to reach roughly 1 million users with its portal during the first year.
mufin GmbH generates revenues by taking a percentage of sales made via the portal as well as through income through advertisement displayed on the portal. In addition, at a later point in time certain functionalities of the portal will only be accessible by subscription.
mufin Music Finder software
By means of the mufin software, music collections stored, for example, on the user's hard drive can be analysed for their audio characteristics. If the user then selects a particular piece, mufin will recommend a list of similar titles resembling the mood of the music selected. In this way, even collections containing several thousand titles can be easily organised.
mufin GmbH is offering this functionality to the manufacturers of portable replay devices such as MP3 players for licensing, so that the user can even make use of this function on the go. Mufin GmbH will license this to hardware manufacturers on a per-unit basis.
mufin music recommendation via music shops
mufin GmbH will license its music recommendation functionality to Internet music shops. The customers of those shops can then obtain recommendations for similar music directly from the shop. If a sale is made, mufin GmbH will receive a percentage of revenues.