I have seen the future of music. It's scary, and utterly brilliant.
Imagine being able to tell an app exactly the type of music you'd like to create – the key, the tempo, the genre, the sub-genre – and then that app just... making it for you.Imagine recording yourself singing a verse and a chorus into your phone, uploading this vocal to a platform, and that platform wrapping an entire professional musical production around it, all in the style of your choosing. And the result sounding so polished, it could comfortably sit in the tracklist of Spotify's Today's Top Hits.This is Soundful. The artificial intelligence-driven platform, currently in beta, was recently founded and created by San Diego-based entrepreneur, Diaa El All (pictured).To date Soundful has raised somewhere around $4 million in seed funding – from "leaders" of companies such as Disney and Microsoft. A fuller Series A round is expected to open soon.Soundful's website describes the platform thusly: "Soundful’s music-theory trained algorithms put studio-quality tracks in your hands so you can produce the next hot album, make a viral-worthy TikTok or YouTube sound, or amplify your gaming stream."It promises that anyone using it can "make tracks at the speed of sound". On this Podcast (supported by Voly Music), Diaa El All joins Music Business Worldwide founder, Tim Ingham, to talk about the effect Soundful is about to have on the global music business. Soundful's founder is upbeat and optimistic about how his platform will help today's billion-plus online content creators worldwide find music to use in their content. He also suggests Soundful is already inspiring music makers to move in interesting new creative directions.Ingham is a little more circumspect. He says: "In short, I'm a bit scared of Soundful. And I am utterly amazed by Soundful and its creator."The Music Business Worldwide Podcast is supported by Voly Music.