Quincy Jones is an investor in AI music start-up Musimap

By Emmanuel Legrand 

Composer, producer and entrepreneur Quincy Jones has become an investor in Belgium-based "emotional" Artificial Intelligence company Musimap. Details of the transaction have not been disclosed. Jones will also become a special adviser to Musimap, utilising his industry standing "to foster relationships and help the business grow."  

  In addition, Andreas Spechtler, the CEO and founder of Silicon Castles and former President of Dolby International, has also become an investor in Musimap and will be joining its board of directors. Investment fund and start-up accelerator LeanSquare is also investing in Musimap.

  For Spechtler, Musimap has "married deep music metadata with other relevant data in their unique AI engine to serve the entertainment markets and beyond. Musimap will support all markets where emotions are key for consumer behaviour like in e-Commerce, dating and advertising.”

A tremendous potential

  Musimap said Jones made the decision to invest in the company after he tested its psycho-emotional profiling engine, MusiMe, which builds emotional profiles for listeners, detailing mood, feelings and values based on their listening history. “I’m incredibly impressed by Musimap’s technology and am delighted to be able to help them grow with this investment," said Jones. "I was pleasantly surprised by how accurate my personality profile was when testing MusiMe, and it’s apparent that the product has a tremendous amount of potential.”

  Jones, who produced Michael Jackson's album 'Thriller', is no stranger in investing in new technologies as he invested early on in Spotify and in piano-learning software Playground Sessions. He is also the founder of Qwest TV, offering high-definition streams of concerts and musical documentaries.

  “We are delighted that Quincy Jones has shown such an interest and enthusiasm for Musimap and our products," said Musimap Managing Director, Patrick Zucchetta. "We are looking forward to working with him and learning from the expertise he and his team will provide.” 

Emotional and contextual data

  Musimap claims to have developed "the largest AI-powered emotion-sensitive music database to date, having analysed and manually annotated one million songs to form the backbone of its recommendation system." Its technology automatically generates emotional and contextual metadata, personality profiles and emotional states of mind based on music consumption. 

  Musimap is a member of music standards organisation DDEX and its clients include Universal Music Group, Vevo, BMG Production Music and MotionElements.