Quincy Jones Makes Strategic Investment In AI Startup Musimap
Legendary 28-time Grammy winner will act as special adviser to the startup transforming the personalised recommendations space
Investment is being made via Jones’ media & artist management company Quincy Jones Productions
Former President of Dolby International Andreas Spechtler also invests, joining board of directors
22 October 2020, Brussels & New York: EmotionalArtificial Intelligence company Musimap has welcomed Quincy Jones as an investor.
Musimap captured Jones’ imagination after testing its psycho-emotional profiling engine, MusiMe, which builds emotional profiles for listeners, detailing mood, feelings and values based on their listening history.
Jones marvelled at the engine’s analysis and accuracy when presented with a complete personality profile, recognising the power of personalised recommendations to refashion music consumption. In addition to being an investor, he will act as a special adviser to Musimap, utilising his industry standing to foster relationships and help the business grow.
Music icon, Jones, has long been regarded as a pioneer in the music technology space, investing in Spotify in its early days, as well as piano-learning software, Playground Sessions, alongside Jammcard.
Jones’ career spans seven decades, with notable achievements including becoming the first African American Vice President of a major record label, as well as producing Michael Jackson's all-time best-selling album, Thriller. In 2017, he launched Qwest TV, a service offering high-definition streams of concerts and musical documentaries.
Quincy Jones says: “I’m incredibly impressed by Musimap’s technology and am delighted to be able to help them grow with this investment. 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.”
In welcoming Jones onboard, Musimap Managing Director, Patrick Zucchetta, said: “We are delighted that Quincy Jones has shown such an interest and enthusiasm for Musimap and our products. We are looking forward to working with him and learning from the expertise he and his team will provide.”
Sharing Jones’ enthusiasm for the startup’s aims and accomplishments, CEO and founder of Silicon Castles and former President of Dolby International Andreas Spechtler has also become an investor in Musimap as well as joining the board of directors.
Speaking about the deal, Spechtler said: “I have been following Musimap for many years. This company 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. I am happy to join the Musimap team as a new board member.”
Investment fund and start-up accelerator LeanSquare is also investing in Musimap as part of its commitment to supporting the music technology sector in Belgium and beyond.
Commenting on the Quincy Jones investment, Laurent Burton, President of LeanSquare, added: “The exceptional talent of Quincy Jones not only reinforces the credibility and positioning of Musimap as experts in the AI music sector but also boosts its product development through Quincy’s extraordinary experience and musical expertise. LeanSquare looks forward to seeing the positives this brings for the future of Musimap.”
About Musimap
Musimap is an Emotional Artificial Intelligence company powered by over 20 years of academic research that uses music to understand the emotional world of users thanks to its emotional profiling capabilities.
Musimap has 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. This technology automatically generates emotional and contextual metadata, 1:1 personality profiles and emotional states of mind based on music consumption.
Its core API product caters to all use cases such as search, emotional and contextual auto-tagging, similarities engine, recommendation, playlist and user psychographic profiling. Musimap ultimately helps its clients to achieve personalised dynamic content recommendation at scale in music, entertainment and e-commerce.
Musimap is a DDEX member and its clients include Universal Music Group, Vevo, BMG Production Music and MotionElements. Musimap is also a stakeholder in FuturePulse, an EU-backed technology platform that accurately predicts trends on social media and streaming platforms as well as the commercial performance/potential of artists, tracks, albums or genres up to 12 weeks in advance.
About Quincy Jones
Named by Time Magazine as one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century, Quincy Jones is an impresario in the broadest and most creative sense of the word. His career has encompassed the roles of composer, record producer, artist, film producer, arranger, conductor, instrumentalist, TV producer, record company executive, television station owner, magazine founder, multi-media entrepreneur, and humanitarian. Jones is also the all-time most Grammy-nominated artist with a total of 80 nominations and 28 wins.