Two Sigma Ventures leads $4m round for AI soundtrack composer
Amper Music has raised $4m from investors including Two Sigma Ventures, Advancit Capital, Foundry Group, Kiwi Venture Partners, and Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. The company, which was set up by three Hollywood film composers, allows users to create and customise original music that comes prelicensed for use in perpetuity. "Over 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute," says Colin Beirne, managing director of Two Sigma Ventures. "Amper empowers all these people to be a music composer, enabling them to instantly create and edit a soundtrack to their content."
NEW YORK, March 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Amper Music - the AI music composer, performer, and producer that lets you instantly create and customize original music without needing any prior music experience - raised $4M to introduce the first AI music composition technology to the content creation and music distribution markets. Upon launch, Amper is also pleased to announce that the Associated Press and Hearst Television are using Amper for content production.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/9986b83c-7538-4f54-9187-f58dc6f8bb76

Founded by Hollywood film composers Drew Silverstein, Sam Estes, and Michael Hobe, Amper enables media content creators to simplify their workflow and avoid the time, budgetary, and licensing frustrations of stock music. The music created with Amper receives a global, royalty-free, and perpetual license, avoiding the many legal and financial hurdles of traditional music licensing. Amper also serves as a creative partner to artists, musicians, and composers, who can collaborate with Amper in the creation of their own music.

The $4M seed round was led by Two Sigma Ventures, with participation from Advancit Capital and fresh funding from Foundry Group and Kiwi Venture Partners, and early-on financing from Brooklyn Bridge Ventures.

"There are 15 million professional content creators today, and two billion people in the world walking around every day with a video camera in their pocket, growing by another billion in the next 4 years. Over 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute," says Colin Beirne, Managing Director, Two Sigma Ventures. "Amper empowers all these people to be a music composer, enabling them to instantly create and edit a soundtrack to their content."



Combining the highest levels of artistry with groundbreaking technology, Amper empowers anyone to swiftly create unique, professional music, instantly. Providing content creators with royalty-free license and no unexpected financial expenses, here's how it works:

Select a mood, genre and track duration. Customize with a multitude of easy-to-use editing functionality. Click "Render."

Within seconds, the original composition is created and broadcast-ready.

It seems simple, but this elegant process was made possible from three years of R&D, developing extensive and intricate sample libraries specifically designed to work with Amper's AI.

"We are not investing in Amper because we believe AI will replace people; we're investing in the collaborative effect AI has on human productivity,” says Jason Mendelson, Co-founder & Managing Director at Foundry Group. “We’ve already seen technology augment marketing, sales, and even healthcare processes. Human creativity is the last frontier of machine-learning, and that’s where Amper comes in. We believe Amper will power the world’s music, and make content creators a whole lot more effective in doing so."

And importantly, Amper invites you to collaborate while creating the music, sharing feedback and working together with the AI to perfectly fine-tune the music.

"We believe that humans and artificial intelligence are extraordinary collaborators," says Drew Silverstein, cofounder of Amper Music. "By teaching computers to be intrinsically creative, Amper is enabling relationships between humans and artificial intelligence. Music is the medium through which we express this creativity."



ABOUT AMPER MUSIC

Amper is an AI music composer, performer, and producer that empowers media creators, artists, and musicians to effortlessly craft and customize original music for any and all media content, instantly, without needing any prior music experience. From video to gaming and other interactive technologies, Amper’s web app powers the music for all forms of professional media content, simplifying creators’ workflow; avoiding the time, budgetary, and licensing frustrations of stock music; and enabling users of content creation tools and platforms to create original soundtracks without leaving their existing platform.