
Ask HN: Recommendations for AI generated music software? - andrewstuart
It&#x27;s surprisingly hard to find a solution for these simple requirements:<p>I want to create AI generated to use as soundtracks on videos - so there must be no question about royalties or copyright<p>I want to be able to specify how long the music should go for.<p>I want to be able to save the music.<p>It would be great if I could have some control over the pace&#x2F;style of the music but I&#x27;m not a musician so lots of options would be detrimental.  I don&#x27;t want to compose music - I want it made for me.<p>I&#x27;m happy to pay, but the prices must be clear and up front and not require me to email the company to &quot;make an enquiry&quot;.<p>I&#x27;ve done a fair bit of searching but not found anything to make AI music that meets these needs.  It&#x27;s strange given there is so much interest in AI I would have thought there would be plenty of good products available to buy.<p>Ideally I&#x27;d like to make music such as ambient music, similar to Brian Eno, Jean-Michel Jarre, Phillip Glass, but it would be great just be able to explore a range of types of music to find what I want.<p>Can anyone recommend any good AI music generators?
======
kleer001
What you want is a plain old music generator app. Search for "generative
music". Drop the Ai, it's overkill. Also with the amazing tech these days
anyone can be a musician. It's basically push-botton.

Bloom on the iOs app store.
[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bloom/id292792586](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bloom/id292792586)

Someone's cloned Bloom: [https://github.com/generative-
music/blossom](https://github.com/generative-music/blossom)

Wotja too maybe. Here's their FAQ about rights:
[https://intermorphic.com/wotja/faq/#faq-recording-
ownership](https://intermorphic.com/wotja/faq/#faq-recording-ownership)

Wired can point you in more directions:
[https://www.wired.com/story/generative-music-
apps/](https://www.wired.com/story/generative-music-apps/)

~~~
richrichardsson
> Also with the amazing tech these days anyone can be a musician. It's
> basically push-botton.

And this is why it's getting harder and harder to find decent electronic music
that doesn't sound like a chimp threw its shit at a wall; because some wanna-
be with no musical skill can download a few loops, layer them up in their
cracked FL Studio (or whatever) and over-compress the shit out of it for their
"mastering". imo electronic music was _much_ better when there was a barrier
to entry in so much as you needed about $5k worth of equipment before you
could produce something semi-decent.

~~~
nullandvoid
I think there's just more noise tbh. The overall output of good music is
without a doubt much higher without the 5k barrier to entry - you just have to
search harder to find it

------
m3at
Not "AI" generated, but generated nonetheless, this HN thread from a few
months back should be pretty helpful :

"Generative.fm – Endlessly unique ambient music"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19397817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19397817)

Be careful: this thread is great, I spent a full evening digging into the
various links people posted. You've been warned.

------
Man_On_the_Moon
I run a company that tries to solve your problem!

We haven’t done a big public launch yet - but we use AI techniques to compose
work for existing clients (think businesses + Youtube video creators).

We try to take all friction out of the process.

Here’s how it works: You send link to your video. Tell us what emotions you
want / any requirements (we have a simple form). Our AI engine then structures
and creates a song exclusively for you (no royalties / copyright). We then
have our in-house composers make final adjustments and sync it perfectly w/
your video. We price a lot less than normal composition studios due to the AI
piece.

Trying to talk to as many customers as possible. If I could ask you a few
questions or if you want to be a beta customer please email me at:
leagueduels@gmail.com I’d greatly appreciate it!

~~~
p1esk
What if a client does not like the result?

~~~
Man_On_the_Moon
We deliver a demo first. Clients can then request any changes before we lock
it in as final. Clients can also send links to music they like and we try to
achieve a similar sound.

It's a good point though - we work on a small scale now. We haven't thought
through all the details once we start taking new clients. One free revision
seems like our most likely approach.

~~~
p1esk
If you have to employ composers, why do you need AI? I’m guessing you can hire
3 composers for the salary of a single ML engineer.

~~~
bigzyg33k
I'll hazard it's because they can produce more volume if they're just doing
corrections and syncing

------
p1esk
[http://aiva.ai](http://aiva.ai) is exactly what you’re looking for.

------
futhey
Not what you're asking for, but I think you should take a look at band-in-a-
box ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band-in-a-
Box](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band-in-a-Box)).

When I studied music this was very interesting to me. A lot of music
composition is fill-in-the-blanks / formulaic, and this generates melodies and
countermelodies / accompaniment following a common (user selected) chord
progression, that sounds correct and would probably pass as an assignment from
an undergraduate music composition student.

There's no AI as far as I know, but if there was a Turing test for music, this
would pass.

Coupled with a bit of arrangement and an original melody it can be quite nice.

------
deg4uss3r
There's musenet[0], but it seems like there's only an API to the web
generator[1] that might work for what you need?

[0]: [https://openai.com/blog/musenet/](https://openai.com/blog/musenet/) [1]:
[https://github.com/bmckalla/musenet-api](https://github.com/bmckalla/musenet-
api)

------
withakay
If you use Ableton Live you should check out Magenta Studio
[https://magenta.tensorflow.org/studio/ableton-
live/](https://magenta.tensorflow.org/studio/ableton-live/)

~~~
stallmanite
Holy crap I’ve been wanting to make something just like this. Awesome to see
that it exists.

------
ponyous
Uf damn, just seen that one of the companies thatdid this
[https://www.jukedeck.com/](https://www.jukedeck.com/) is not doing it any
more.

They had everything for free, and the music seemed perfect for background
music for videos, etc... You could configure parameters, including the time
and get an interesting track out.

~~~
coziestSoup
Yup, Jukedeck solved exactly this. Looks like they got bought by ByteDance
very recently ([https://musically.com/2019/07/23/ai-music-startup-
jukedecks-...](https://musically.com/2019/07/23/ai-music-startup-jukedecks-
ceo-now-runs-the-ai-lab-of-tiktok-owner-bytedance/))!

------
luckman212
Not sure if this helps at all, but here's one that was featured here on HN not
too long ago:

[https://generative.fm/](https://generative.fm/)

~~~
alexbainter
Thanks for sharing this, I'm the author of Generative.fm and the music systems
on it.

Just wanted to pop in to tell OP that there's a recording feature built in to
the site, and everyone is free to use the recordings for whatever they'd like
- I just ask that you give attribution (it's licensed under CC-BY 4.0).
Though, there's no configuration and I don't use AI, if that matters.

EDIT: I forgot to mention it's free, and all the music is ambient.

~~~
qpiox
The web-site shows an empty page at this moment.

~~~
alexbainter
Would you mind telling me which browser you tried with?

~~~
qpiox
It is due to certain settings in the browser profile that I use for everyday
surfing. Without giving too much information, let's just say that although
some things are blocked, popular music and video streaming web-sites still
work, so I guess this one should also work. It works in a clean profile with
default settings in the same browser.

There are some errors like this:

Loading failed for the <script> with source
“[https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”](https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”).
generative.fm:1:1

Loading failed for the <script> with source
“[https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-134692042-1”](https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-134692042-1”).
generative.fm:9:1

TypeError: this.context.createConstantSource is not a
functionmain.7acf3eaa3b54511db064.js:7:5340

------
Somniloquist
Check out Amper:

[https://www.ampermusic.com/](https://www.ampermusic.com/)

My good friend created the tech. They use a lot of custom acoustic instrument
samples and some sound synthesis driven by Haskell and SuperCollider. No
neural nets or machine learning involved (which is what most people seem to
mean by "AI" these days), it's mostly rules based, with a large and byzantine
rule set which has been cultivated, so some may call it Algorithmic or
Generative music.

~~~
andrewstuart
So close, it says on the front page that it can be used on videos!

Amazingly, the first link is one so you can listen to the output!!

There's a product link! ..... which leads to nothing about a product.

And there's no pricing information at all.

It looked really promising but I had to conclude there's nothing there to buy.

~~~
drewsilverstein
You can try Amper for free here: [https://www.ampermusic.com/lp/royalty-free-
ai-music-1/](https://www.ampermusic.com/lp/royalty-free-ai-music-1/)

------
el_cujo
Not quite "AI generated", but Dunc's Algomusic[0] is free. I don't think you
have THAT much control over how it sounds beyond picking different seed
inputs. I find it especially great for weird/unsettling background music. Not
sure if there is a built in way to export tracks but there is probably some
way to use another app to record it.

[0] [https://marasmusine.itch.io/duncs-
algomusic](https://marasmusine.itch.io/duncs-algomusic)

------
Turambar4563
Hi HN. There is cool app that lets you do just that, it's called Lonofi. They
are currently in open Beta test and you can check them out here on
[https://home.lonofi.com](https://home.lonofi.com)

It works sligtly differently than the other AI music website:instead of just
choosing a style an pressing play to get random music, here you actually
choose the sounds and instruments you want to hear, and an AI mix them
together intelligently to create an ambiance that play forever without
repeating itself.

Given it's AI, it's all royalty free. The download function isn't available
now, but if you create a scene and want to download it, just ask the guys,
they will let you do it for free at the moment (in exchange for a good review)
.

------
jonathanstrange
To add to this list, I haven't used it but I've recently listened to a few
demos of the commercial orb composer [1]. I personally think that the melodies
and hooks of these music generators usually sound a bit lame, but
orchestration and accompaniment somehow make up for it.

[https://www.orb-composer.com/](https://www.orb-composer.com/)

------
po_
> I want to create AI generated to use as soundtracks on videos - so there
> must be no question about royalties or copyright

> I want to be able to specify how long the music should go for.

> I want to be able to save the music.

Product question @andrewstuart - is it important to you that the changes in
video scenes line up with the beat of the music?

~~~
andrewstuart
>> is it important to you that the changes in video scenes line up with the
beat of the music?

Well yes in an ideal world it would be great to feed in a video and have
appropriate music created to match scenes etc but I can't imagine how that
would work without fiddling on my part, and it's hard to imagine it being
cheap. I want to do this cheap.

------
blueboo
Royalty-free soundtrack music is incredibly cheap. It would be faster, better,
and cheaper to buy what you want.

~~~
p1esk
How cheap?

------
cafogleman
Its implementation may be a bit academic for what you're looking for, but
Watson Beat ([https://github.com/cognitive-catalyst/watson-
beat](https://github.com/cognitive-catalyst/watson-beat)) can generate music
given a seed melody a number of configurable parameters.

All output is in MIDI files, and by default need to be glued together manually
(though I suspect this could be automated).

I've also wondered how interesting this could get if it could be configured to
dynamically feed the generated melodies back in as the seed, effectively
evolving the music over time while remaining somewhat familiar from one
adaptation to the next.

------
peterhookgen
Hi!

I am currently working on the AI-generated music problem

Every output on the site is unique and public domain, feel free to ask me
about any questions

Link: [https://hookgen.com/](https://hookgen.com/)

------
_emacsomancer_
David Cope's Common Lisp one?
[http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/cmmc.html](http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/cmmc.html)

------
ptownori
The red herring here is AI. I believe most everything you’re trying to
accomplish can be done using a popular and longstanding application called
Band in a Box, from a company called PG Music.

------
jiberwarrior
A bit late to the party, but I wrote a generator for a project last year
running on vanilla JS with a simple HTML front end. There is no recording
feature, but I'm sure you could just record the playback externally.

[https://github.com/gee842/genmusic](https://github.com/gee842/genmusic)

hosted here:
[http://genmusic.byethost11.com/genmusic/](http://genmusic.byethost11.com/genmusic/)

~~~
jiberwarrior
at the suggestion of another user, I changed hosts to github pages, rather
than a shady web-host.

[https://gee842.github.io/genmusic/dev/index2.html](https://gee842.github.io/genmusic/dev/index2.html)

------
stagas
This[0] is not a music generator, but a very handy tool for music makers. It
extracts vocals and/or produces a karaoke version of a song. It claims it is
using AI and I suppose it does so because the results are astonishingly good.
It's not just the removal of the "center" channel which most vocal removers
are doing. It literally pulls the vocal track out of the mix like magic.

[0]: [https://phonicmind.com/](https://phonicmind.com/)

------
mitchellshow
[https://boomy.com](https://boomy.com) \- try the “ambient” filter in beats,
or anything in meditation / relaxation style

~~~
andrewstuart
As with most of the options suggested in this thread, no pricing and no
explicit definition of whether it can be used on videos and no clear
definition that I can save output of a specific length.

I get the impression that most of the music software companies are run by
people who are very musically/engineering oriented, but not very connected to
the business side of things.

I shouldn't have to send an email to a company saying "how do I buy this?"

Without any obvious product or service for sale, it's not discernible from a
hobby project.

~~~
shakna
Boomy's EULA [0] is a fairly easy read that covers the business side of
things.

> In consideration of free use of Boomy, any arrangement, sound recording,
> composition, and/or musical work accessed through the use of the Boomy
> platform, shall be the property of Boomy Corporation as a work-made-for-
> hire.

> The user may not edit, remix, or create derivative works of the song outside
> of the Boomy application without purchasing ownership.

> The user may not distribute the song to streaming services without
> purchasing ownership.

> The user is permitted to purchase the ownership from Boomy for a fee
> outlined in the Library section of the Boomy app.

[0] [https://boomy.com/eula](https://boomy.com/eula)

------
qpiox
In order to use an AI generator, it has to be fed with music that is in the
style you like so that a model is created and trained. The question of
copyright and plagiarism in such a case is not really clearly defined. The
patterns it will generate will not be same as existing ones, but can sound or
seem similar. As if the "AI composer" was influenced by the original song
composers.

Has anyone any comments regarding such issues?

------
gekkostate
One option is Wolfram Tones (tones.wolfram.com/generate). It uses cellular
automatons (so not quite AI but achieves your goal) to generate music.

\- You can change the type of music (Jazz, Classic etc.), select instruments
and so on

\- You can download the music as well

The only downside is that you can only get a maximum of 30 seconds. What you
can do however, is go to their free programming lab and write some code to
generate any length that you might want.

------
andrewstuart
I found an app called Mubert which seems close to what I want, but as with all
of these generative/AI music things, they seem to carefully avoid giving
straight information about price and the licence for using the music on
videos.

Startups: please make something that I can pay money for that lets me make
music clips and use them on videos, that I can buy at a clear price without
sending an enquiry email.

------
8bitsrule
Perhaps this product by Teenage Engineering would wet your whistle.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/magazine/electronic-
music...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/magazine/electronic-music-
synthesizers.html)

------
fletchowns
Is there anything that can generate music for in the style of a particular
musician? It would be cool to generate a clip that sounds like a particular
artist or band that convincingly sounds like them jamming / working on a new
song, but it's actually some made up AI generated song.

------
nyxtom
It's worth considering the complexity of this problem and how notable and
popular services have approached this
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Genome_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Genome_Project)

------
dimmuborgir
I was going to type Jukedeck. Thought I'd visit the site first. Offline.
Apparently TikTok has bought it!

------
GeraniumFusion
Not a generator, but maybe inspiring nonetheless:
[https://daily.bandcamp.com/2018/01/25/music-ai-coding-
algori...](https://daily.bandcamp.com/2018/01/25/music-ai-coding-algorithms/)

------
fhars
There is Ludwig by ChessBase, which fits the AI requirement. You will have to
find a way to come up with the primary melodies, though: [http://www.write-
music.com/](http://www.write-music.com/)

------
singlequbit
Maybe Mubert is what you are looking for?
[https://mubert.com/](https://mubert.com/)

It has a lot of channels including ambient music.

------
noja
[http://tones.wolfram.com/generate/](http://tones.wolfram.com/generate/)

------
jeremyleach
You can try my webapp, [https://www.muzoti.com](https://www.muzoti.com)

------
mikekchar
Slightly orthogonal to your request, but I'm not quite sure what you get by
choosing machine generated music over human generated music WRT copyright. The
machine generated music will be considered a derived work under copyright, so
you're going to need a license for it anyway. You could just obtain music from
a human and get a license as well.

~~~
rjmunro
I don't think this is true. The output of a program is not considered as a
derivative work of that program. E.g. Is a photo taken by a digital camera
considered a derived work from the camera firmware?

~~~
mikekchar
That's a different situation. The digital camera is not creating the work.
It's analagous to a compiler generating code. It used to be the fashion of
compiler vendors to not give you a free license to the derived work that the
compiler generates. GCC even has a separate clause in its license to allow the
output not to be GPL. See this license:
[https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/manual/license.html](https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/manual/license.html)

------
drewsilverstein
Hello from Amper! You can do _exactly_ this with Amper, and you can try it for
free: [https://www.ampermusic.com/lp/royalty-free-ai-
music-1/](https://www.ampermusic.com/lp/royalty-free-ai-music-1/)

------
TrinaryWorksToo
Code parade made a pretty good music generator that is to your specifications
[https://youtu.be/l-ZZ8dkJVOI](https://youtu.be/l-ZZ8dkJVOI)

And yes, it is true AI.

~~~
p1esk
The quality of music in their YouTube videos is pretty awful. Do they have
better samples suitable as video soundtracks?

~~~
TrinaryWorksToo
You should be able to download the software and generate it yourself!

~~~
p1esk
I prefer listening to some samples before I install anything. Have you
generated anything good with their software?

~~~
TrinaryWorksToo
Good chiptune video game music. You can learn more about the process here:
[https://youtu.be/UWxfnNXlVy8](https://youtu.be/UWxfnNXlVy8)

~~~
p1esk
Yep, that's the video I watched before I said the quality of music is awful.
Anyway, I'm not sure how is "chiptune video game music" relevant to what OP is
asking for.

~~~
TrinaryWorksToo
They asked for a program that generates music with AI, which this is.

------
baalimago
>for these simple requirements

What gives you the idea that these requirements are simple for an AI to live
up to? I'm only a novice in AI, but the product you're asking for seems very
complex.

~~~
andrewstuart
It is pretty simple:

The app lets me make music clips of a certain time duration, save them and use
them on videos royalty/license free. The app gives me some control over
pace/style of music. I pay either a once off or monthly fee to use it.

~~~
iamsaitam
Simple to describe, not accomplish. Think about the sheer amount of
genres/sub-genres, what you're describing can probably be done in a few
popular genres by some ML algorithm.. But are the results good enough?

------
mcqueenjordan
Shameless self-plug, I maintain a Spotify playlist that is optimized for
getting me into "Flow." I use it for coding/thinking. It has 677 tracks so
far. See here: [https://whoami.sh/thought/flow-
playlist](https://whoami.sh/thought/flow-playlist)

[https://brain.fm/](https://brain.fm/) also has some good stuff. Some of it is
tailored for focusing and works pretty well as coding music. I believe their
stuff is AI-generated.

~~~
Deimorz
That looks like a nice playlist (I know lots of the artists and will have to
check out some of the others), but it's completely unrelated to someone asking
for a way to generate copyright-free music to use in their own videos.

