SOUNDRAW, an artificial intelligence-powered beat and track generator, has raised $3 million in funding as it continues to grow its platform which has so far garnered a following of over 557,000 creators.
The investment round was led by Carbide Ventures, with participation from other investors including mint VC, Ceres, iSGS, SMBC Venture Capital, Deepcore, and Kazuomi Kaneto. Notably, Paul Rosenberg, CEO of Goliath Artists and President of Shady Records, also joined the funding round. Rosenberg is best known as the manager of Eminem.
Daigo Kusunoki, a Japanese championship-winning dancer with a background in music technology, founded SOUNDRAW. His previous venture, a wearable music device called Soundmoovz, sold nearly half a million units within 18 months.
“I started SOUNDRAW to make music really open and fun and easy for anyone to create and use, no matter what their technical ability, and we’ve succeeded,” SOUNDRAW founder and CEO Daigo Kusunoki said. “We can’t wait to put more tools into more hands, so that everyone can make music.”
“I started SOUNDRAW to make music really open and fun and easy for anyone to create and use, no matter what their technical ability, and we’ve succeeded.”
Daigo Kusunoki, SOUNDRAW
SOUNDRAW says its platform, which offers unlimited, royalty-free music, enables users to create instrumental tracks.
The platform caters to a wide range of creators, from vocalists seeking backing tracks to content producers in need of mood-setting music for their projects.
Creators can choose their preferred genre, mood and length of up to 5 minutes, and SOUNDRAW generates music from those selections. Users can then customize the generated music, eliminating the need for additional software or complex editing.
While initially associated with genres like Hip Hop, Drill, Phonk, and Afrobeats, SOUNDRAW gained unexpected mainstream exposure in 2023. The Pepperoni Hug Spot commercial, a parody ad entirely generated by AI, featured background music created using the platform. The ad was entirely made by AI models prompted to generate the script, voiceover, visuals, and music for a fictitious pizza restaurant.
“Pepperoni Hug Spot – while a hilarious parody – also served as a great example of how SOUNDRAW supports creative people who don’t think of themselves as musicians or producers,” said Kusunoki. “We help them make something amazing. And we are currently onboarding artists who can use Soundraw to create backing tracks for their music, too, with some exciting partnerships on the horizon.”
“We want to assure our users that all the music generated through our platform is created using proprietary algorithms and data sets that have been created in-house by our music producers.”
Daigo Kusunoki, SOUNDRAW
SOUNDRAW added that it prioritizes creator rights with its royalty-free licensing model. Creators can freely use and monetize their SOUNDRAW-generated tracks on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram without copyright concerns. Beyond the user-facing web app, SOUNDRAW offers a B2B service, an API that allows integration of its music generation engine into other creative platforms.
“We value artists and their craft and understand the importance of legal rights and ownership when it comes to AI-generated music. We want to assure our users that all the music generated through our platform is created using proprietary algorithms and data sets that have been created in-house by our music producers,” Kusunoki added.
SOUNDRAW also owns Ecrett AI, another music generation platform that helps creators make soundtracks for content such as podcasts and videos, but not for standalone music files. Ecrett says on its website that it has created 54 million combinations of music to date. The platform claims to add 500,000 new “patterns of music” every month.
SOUNDRAW joins the growing list of music creation platforms securing significant funding. This trend reflects the rise of independent creators and the widening availability of user-friendly music production tools.
BeatConnect, a platform for collaborative music creation, recently announced that it had raised an additional CAD $2.25 million (USD $1.7 million) in funding to support the launch of its platform. The investment round was backed by tech and music industry investors like Sfermion and existing investors FICC (Fonds d’investissement de la culture et des communications), Anges Québec, and Triptyq Capital.
Less than a month ago, music/tech startup EngineEars also secured $7.5 million in a seed funding round led by VC firm Drive Capital, with participation from 645 Ventures, as well as existing investors Slauson & Co. and FLÜS Investment Group (the venture arm of SALxCO).
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