Abbey Road Red, our audio tech incubator, hosted its annual Red Demo Day yesterday. Casting a spotlight on the latest graduates and introducing the new start-up joining the programme, the event was held in the iconic Studio Two. Bringing together the most exciting and innovative developments within the technology industry, the evening provided a rare opportunity to meet the start-ups and hear more about Red’s advancements in music technology.

Abbey Road Studios’ MD Isabel Garvey begun proceedings with an overview of the evolution of Abbey Road Red: ‘When we created Abbey Road Red we were ahead of the curve in launching a music tech incubator, and the amazing journey we’ve taken with our 14 companies so far has seen us ride that curve into very exciting territory, especially with the pervasiveness of AI across the value chain and the merging of the tech and music industries.’

She also spoke about the need to recruit more teams with women founders and referenced the women participating at last November’s Hackathon as an encouraging sign: '20% of the hackathon were women, which was really reassuring, but we’re not seeing it at the founder level,' she said.

It was then over to our own Karim Fanous, Innovation Manager of Abbey Road Red, who took us through what has been an exciting year in Abbey Road’s innovation department: ‘Our start-ups are pushing innovation boundaries in every sense, whether creating machine intelligent microphones, generative and adaptive composition platforms, AI-powered mastering tools, immersive projection systems, lyric visualisations in realtime, and new licensing frameworks for social media creators using music. We are trying to live and breathe innovation with our founders as well as help add to that air with our incubation support.’

During the Demo Day, Abbey Road Red introduced the latest start-up joining the programme, the graduating start-ups and previous alumni demonstrating advancements in the use of machine intelligence, algorithms, music metadata and licensing frameworks, as well as immersive content projection. Previous alumni that were in attendance include Vochlea Music, AI Music and Scored.

First to the stage we had Humtap who have been perfecting their AI-powered generative composition mobile app in the incubator. Humtap is a consumer-facing app that transforms user inputs (humming and tapping) into songs in a number of different genres and styles with the option to add a vocal track and video to your creations. Employing technologies such as artificial intelligence, music information retrieval (MIR) and digital signal processing (DSP), Humtap is democratising the music creation process. Find out more: http://www.humtap.co.uk

Next up is Lickd, who have used their time in our incubator to develop the first commercial music licensing platform designed for online content creators. Creators pre-pay a fee per track linked to the size of their audience and their proprietary software - "Vouch" - manages the claim through Content ID, ensuring licensed users continue to receive their ad revenue. First to market, first to license commercial music and the first claims free experience for creators and all over the world. Discover more: http://www.lickd.co.uk

Straight from Tokyo, Japan are COTODAMA. COTODAMA are bringing lyric culture back to centre-stage with their intelligent lyric synchronisation and visualisation software, which manifests itself in their Lyric Speaker, the soon to be released Lyric Speaker Canvas and the co-developed rekordbox with Pioneer DJ. Their Expression Engine creates lyric visuals in real-time matching song mood, structure and lyric timing information. The Lyric Speakers showcase the potential of the lyric visualisation capabilities, whilst the technology itself can be integrated into many different applications from concert screens to smart speakers, making COTODAMA’s technology both versatile and visually stunning. Find out more: https://lyric-speaker.com/

Experts in the creation of immersive experiences in real spaces, Broomx Technologies are the makers of the MK Player360, a unique projection device to enjoy interactive VR applications & 360° media without the need for individual headsets. The team have also created BroomxVR, a community platform where VR artists & content creators can share and monetise their productions. This patented system is able to work in any room or corner, with a wide range of applications, and it is currently making an impact in a number of sectors such as health, education, tourism, engineering, events production & retail. Discover now: http://www.broomx.com/

LifeScore is a ground-breaking adaptive music platform that takes the highest quality musical cells, recorded at Abbey Road studios, devised by virtuoso composer and founder CEO Philip Sheppard, performed by expert session orchestra players, and processes them with an adaptive engine that creates constantly evolving and personalised versions of the music.

It’s adaptive music that sounds like it’s been composed and performed by humans. An organic and high-quality starting point combined with adaptive algorithms that enables you to have your own musicians performing in your handset/living room/environment. LifeScore becomes a constantly evolving soundtrack to your life. Find out more: https://www.lifescoremusic.com/