GoKawiilToday’s AI music startups, like Suno and Udio, offer technology that leverage artifical intelligence for music generation. But a new company, GRAI, believes that most people don’t want to use AI to generate music from scratch — they’d rather do other things like remix tunes, share them with friends, or play around with tracks by doing things like changing a track’s style, just for fun.
Of course, whether or not an artist wants anyone to play around with their tracks, or to what extent, is something they should get to decide.
Music lab GRAI, now backed by a $9 million seed round, wants to put that control in artists’ hands, while also capitalizing on the power of AI to transform how consumers engage with music.
The company, built by Belarusian founders who previously sold their video creation app VOCHI to Pinterest, is experimenting with new AI music products. Today, this includes apps like the remixing app Music with Friends for iOS and another AI music playground for Android. These apps, and others that may ship in the future, will help to inform the company how consumers want to engage with music beyond AI-enabled creation or listening alone.
Image Credits:GRAI
“The idea that we’re building the company around is what the next thing can be in music AI interaction and consumption,” explains GRAI co-founder and CEO Ilya Liasun, who is currently based in Poland alongside much of the team. He says the main reason the founders started GRAI is that music has become one of the last major consumer categories that hasn’t gone “creator-first.”
“We have problems — discovery is broken, listening is passive, and social context is almost non-existent,” Liasun notes.
Meanwhile, he doesn’t think that AI will kill artists and labels, as some fear. Instead, the team at GRAI believes that AI could lead to new ways to engage with music, beyond just creating a tune through generative AI technology.
The company intends to aim its products at Gen Z and Gen Alpha users who tend to discover new music through culture, meaning friends, fandoms, and through short-form content, like TikTok. These users don’t want to be creators or music producers; they just want to participate somehow.
Image Credits:GRAI
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