LANDR Gets More Investment For Audio AI Products

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (there’s a difference) is being used in more and more software audio products these days, and the online mastering platform known as LANDR has been at the forefront of the technology. It looks like we’ll see even more on the AI side from the company as it’s just closed a $26 million financing round to help it develop more products in the AI realm.

The investment came from Sony Innovation Fund, microphone manufacturer Shure, and Canadian state-owned financing corporation Investissement Québec and Fonds de solidarité FTQ. Additional investors include Warner Music, Plus Eight Equity Partners, Slaight Communications, YUL Ventures and PEAK Capital Partners.

LANDR had previously raised $10.4 million, and has been reasonably successful, mastering over 12 million tracks from 160 countries for 2.5 million artist since its launch in 2014.

As stated above, much of the technology behind LANDR is based on AI. I had a nice discussion on the technology and company with the former lead engineer for LANDR Paul Edwards on Episode #252 of my Inner Circle Podcast, that answered many of the questions that you might have.

While there’s no hint of what kind of products the company may be developing, audio software is definitely moving towards AI as we see great new examples of it every day from a variety of companies.

By the way, the differences between AI and Machine Learning is that AI means getting a computer to mimic human behavior in some way. Machine Learning is a subset of AI and consists of the techniques that enables a computer to figure things out from the experiences it’s having and teach itself.

Either way, the robots are definitely coming even to the audio and music business. This will disrupt the lives of many people making a nice living doing things the way they’ve always been done, and many of those jobs will become redundant as a result (I think we’re already seeing that with mastering, and less so in mixing). It’s time to evolve with the technology or it will pass you by.

---