Creative Catalyst: AI in the Music Industry

To lead a project your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size
• collaborate with other UK registered organisations
• be or involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• charity
• not for profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

A business can apply as the lead for multiple applications in the competition, but only one successful project will be funded.

Any organisation can collaborate in any number of applications.

Collaborators can be international but organisations outside of the UK cannot be funded. Industry stakeholders can also be from within the music industry or from an industry that will benefit the UK Music Sector.

Your project must:

• have total costs between £100,000 and £250,000
• last between 6 and 12 months
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results in the UK
• start by 1 April 2024
• end by 31 March 2025

We are not funding projects that:

• are not collaborative
• do not utilise or enable AI
• do not economically benefit the UK’s music industry
• focus on sectors and challenges outside of the music industry

The aim of this competition is to advance the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) products and services within the global music supply chain which benefits the UK Music Sector.

You must collaborate with industry stakeholders to unlock the full potential of AI applications across the value chain, supporting and uplifting the music industry, and driving long term creative and commercial success.

We are interested in proposals across the whole music industry including live, recorded and publishing.

Your project must:

• support the growth of the UK music industry
• utilise artificial intelligence or enable the use of AI
• demonstrate a clearly innovative and ambitious idea
• respond to the changing market conditions and challenges in the global music industry
• be market ready within 12 months of receiving support
• demonstrate value for money

We encourage applications which partner with organisations within the traditional music industry supply chain, for example, music labels and music venues.

Your project can focus on one or more of the following:

• assistive generative AI as a collaborative creator tool to benefit the value chain
• opportunities to improve meta data for discovery, for example, deep learning, enabling collaborations across rightsholders, music publishers
• data integrity for machine learning where data is robust, reliable, and accessible to benefit and address the needs across the ecosystem
• transparent AI algorithm development with a focus on bias reduction, ethical approaches to content generation and fairness
• harnessing AI for artist-first creativity and new forms of licensing and artist or fan creativity
• meaningful fan engagement and new channels of artist or fan communication and monetisation, incorporating AI with other technologies, such as Web3, Gaming, and Metaverse

This is not an exhaustive list. Other innovations utilising AI which can address the fundamental issues the industry needs resolving are welcome.

Innovate UK KTN will hold an online briefing on Thursday 19th October, 10am-noon: click here to register for a place.

If you would like help to find a collaboration partner, please contact Innovate UK KTN’s Creative Industries team.