SyncFloor, the music discovery and licensing platform, has been awarded a technology patent for the key part of its platform designed with the needs of video production teams in mind: its “natural language search.”
As CEO Kirt Debique (pictured) explained to Music Ally in our Startup Files piece in June 2020, SyncFloor believes it can generate more licensing deals by allowing music supervisors to search through catalogues of music in a language aligned with their workflow: ”we can recognise a search request of ‘a song like the one from American Beauty.’”.
SyncFloor now holds the patent for its method of music identification, categorisation and serving the results to the user.
In the last year or so, a flurry of huge investments has been made in music catalogues, and thus finding new ways to prise more money – and doing it more easily – from them is of vital importance to rightsholders.
Debique told Music Ally that the patent is part of a wider push from SyncFloor to “solve hard end-to-end problems in discovery, collaboration, and licensing at scale”, which the company sees as a key piece of the music industry’s future.
Searching for the music you really want is not just a problem for ad agencies, YouTubers, and music supervisors, as anyone who has typed a feeling or mood into a streaming app will attest. Could SyncFloor ever license out its technology for more “natural” music searching to other, non-competitor music platforms like streaming services?
“We have been asked several times in the past about licensing these capabilities,” said Debique. So far, those approaches have been turned down. However: “We are always open to conversation…”
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