High Growth AI Accelerator

Music Technology UK is a membership association with a mission to drive recognition of the UK as a global leader in music tech innovation. They stand side by side with the UK’s world-leading music industry to maximise opportunities for investment and growth. By building innovative and productive partnerships with music industry stakeholders and supporting new and existing initiatives, Music Technology UK aims to create greater value for all.

The challenges developed by Music Technology UK are focused on how AI can support the huge opportunities for growth and innovation in the music industry, and redefine how music is created, produced, consumed and distributed. We are seeking ideas to simplify rights management, enhance efficiency, and empower artists in monetisation and visibility amidst digital streaming platforms.

Please choose one challenge focus area or present your idea for Music Technology UK:

Rights and Royalties

• How might we streamline the payment of recording and publishing royalties to artists, ensuring reduced waiting times and more accurate income?
• How might we enhance the process of labelling and organising recordings to ensure consistency and facilitate accurate royalty payments to rights holders?

Content and Ownership

• How might we address the oversaturation of music content on streaming services to ensure accurate identification and compensation for artists?
• How might we support artists in identifying and addressing potential cases of likeness infringement across various creative elements like songwriting, melodies, and lyrics?
• How might we empower artists to maintain ownership and control over their digital identity and content, allowing them to determine how it is used and distributed?

Music Production

• How might we optimise aspects of music production to enhance the creation process across various mediums, including composition, editing, writing and performance?
• How might we enhance the depth of interaction and collaboration among artists, rights holders, record labels and other key players?

Founded in 2012, LADbible Group has redefined entertainment and news for a social generation. LADbible Group is now one of the world’s largest social publishers, boasting a following of 452 million worldwide, including 141 million in the US. Their audience reach extends to over 1 billion. The group includes ten core brands, six websites, and an international presence that spans the UK, US, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, India, and beyond.

The challenges experienced by LADbible Group revolve around their existing large archive of User Generated Content (UGC) and licensed content provided via its CONTENTbible platform for search, viewing and third-party licensing. These include maintaining high-quality standards for UGC managing metadata, which impact the efficiency of content search. We are looking for solutions to transform or repurpose our existing UGC, which is often of suboptimal quality, and methods to improve the searchability, organisation, and understanding of its content archive.

Please choose one challenge focus area or present your idea for LADbible Group:

Reformatting and Repurposing

• How might we enhance video or audio quality and prepare content for new platforms or mediums?
• How might we efficiently reformat or edit existing content to meet the requirements of different social media platforms and audiences?

Enhancing Discoverability

• How might we enrich the metadata of our archive to enhance discoverability and surface relevant content more effectively?
• How might we create new metrics, analyses, and outputs that enhance content organisation and accessibility?

Merlin Entertainments is the global leader in branded entertainment destinations, creating memorable, immersive brand experiences for over 60 million guests annually. Our strategy is to deliver high growth and high returns by leveraging strong brands, a diversified portfolio, and strategic partnerships with Intellectual Property owners. Our goal is to continually innovate and enhance the guest experience, ensuring magical memories for all visitors.

The challenges faced by Merlin Entertainments span across various domains, including refining creative workflows, optimising queue flows, and measuring visitor satisfaction, all aimed at enhancing the overall theme park experience. Currently, prolonged wait times significantly diminish guest satisfaction; and the Net Promoter Score (NPS) is measured through on-site surveys on digital interfaces after guests exit rides, which has limitations and may not accurately reflect NPS or its drivers. We are looking for AI-powered solutions to improve the visitor experience, refine the waiting experience or even eliminate queues, and enhance our creative processes.

Please choose one challenge focus area or present your idea for Merlin Entertainments:

Supercharging Creative Processes

• How might we facilitate the ideation process by generating innovative concepts and themes and assist in the creation of detailed visualisations to represent new experience designs?
• How might we streamline the development of experience narratives and storytelling elements, while connecting visuals and descriptions into storyboards?
• How might we enable collaborative design processes among creative teams, ensuring consistency and quality in the final product?

Enhancing Queue Management

• How might we predict and manage guest flow effectively, incorporating real-time updates and personalised queue management to minimise waiting times?
• How might we create engaging experiences for guests during their wait and enriching their overall satisfaction?
• How might we help pre-plan guest visit intentions to enable parks to predict and prepare for daily visitor intake?

Optimising Attraction Feedback

• How might we accurately capture and analyse guest satisfaction in real-time and provide actionable insights to improve guest experiences and overall NPS?
• How might we collate and summarise multiple online guest feedback sources to identify the key drivers influencing NPS for attractions on a daily basis?

Bauer Media Audio is Europe’s leading digital commercial radio broadcaster and audio operator. Experts in the power of sound, the company reaches over 57 million listeners weekly through its market-leading broadcast radio, online services, and podcasts.

The challenges of Bauer Media Group focuses on enhancing Rayo, their audio application which functions as a centralised hub for podcasts and radio broadcast from over 50 European stations. We are seeking AI-driven solutions to elevate Rayo and increase user engagement, satisfaction and retention. This involves tailoring content, creating personalised experiences, visualising audio data and optimising media production workflows.

Please choose one challenge focus area or present your idea for Bauer Media Group:

Personalised Audio Curation

• How might we create a personalised ‘companion’ to join users on their listening journey, suggesting content that resonates with their current mood and preferences?
• How might we maintain the element of surprise by incorporating both familiar and new tracks, ensuring recommendations are not overly predictable?
• How might we leverage new data points collected by Rayo to provide recommendations that dynamically adapt to each user’s context and listening habits?
• How might we automate content atomisation and metadata enrichment to deliver personalised experiences, such as generating yearly or birthday summaries of users’ listening habits or suggesting content tailored to their work commute duration?

Visualise and Optimise Audio Experience

• How might we integrate visuals with audio content to enrich the user experience and appeal to a broader audience who prefers multimedia content?
• How might we transform audio into different formats of content such as videos?
• How might we streamline the entire media production workflow, from ideation to distribution,
  while continuously optimising content based on feedback data?

If the industry partner-led challenges do not align with your current project goals or focus area, we invite companies to present their ideas that can address pressing issues aligned with one of the four challenge owners and their relevant creative subsector.

Your project must:

• Demonstrate an innovative and ambitious idea that is technically feasible and scalable.
• Utilise AI/ML or enable the use of AI/ML.
• Demonstrate an increase in business productivity, contributing to the growth of the UK’s
  creative industries.
• Address specific challenges faced by one of the challenge owners and their respective
  subsectors – music, digital media and entertainment, leisure and entertainment parks, radio
  and publishing.
• Consider the potential impact of the proposed solution and how it will benefit the challenge
  owner, their audience, and the broader creative landscape.

Organisations offering valuable resources and services, such as cloud computing credits or free access to their platforms, along with expertise to assist companies in their technical development.

• Amazon Web Services
• Google Cloud Platform
• YellowDog
• NVIDIA
• MongoDB

Organisations providing guidance and support in navigating regulatory compliance, legal frameworks, and industry standards. Their expertise ensures that companies operate within legal boundaries and adhere to relevant regulations.

• Information Commissioner’s Office
• BSI
• Marks & Clerk