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Interview - Casperaki



Casperaki is an AI platform that is disrupting the music industry for the better, not the worse. Their enhanced and algorithmic approach to songwriting is looking for the best parts in artists, and proactively working with musicians to write hook-ridden pop music for the likes of the Eurovision Song Contest more recently, which just highlights their progression in what is a relatively short timeframe of 3 years.


We sat down with Head of Partnerships Mariana Brandão, who gives us more of an insight into Casperaki's unique approach to this ever changing industry for Ignite. Enjoy!


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Hello! For our new readers, can you please tell us more about the unique approach Casperaki takes to music production and how it differs from traditional AI platforms?


AI in music production is nothing new. Certainly, there are AI platforms out there offering great services to users. What distinguishes us that we are firmly about supporting creators, not replacing them. For us, this isn’t just lip service. We’re trying to shape our product to create the most value for artists. At its core, this means giving artists as granular control about the tracks as possible and making the tooling available in the format they prefer most – which is as a VST plugin for a DAW.


The VST plugin suite is still a few months away. For now, you can use our chatbots, which have proven to come up with incredible track ideas, concepts, and lyrics. The chatbots will allow you to export stems. Additionally, we’re about to launch an app at icansing.com, which will allow you to create catchy choruses and animate your face singing them. This app is directed more towards social media and content creators who want to make songs, have fun, and have their face animated by taking a photo and typing/saying what they would like the song to be about.


How does Casperaki empower both novices and professionals in the music industry to unlock their creative potential?


We have a team of music industry professionals who have helped us address the pain points for professionals. We want to serve as a starting point, providing ideas or concepts to save them time coming up with suggestions. It’s all about enhancing their productivity. We tried this out at a writing camp we hosted back in January, where the goal was to come up with AI-generated ideas and shape them into full songs. Ultimately, artists will be able to use this in whatever form they want. For novices, we can provide a complete song from start to finish, including melody and lyrics. Vocals are also available, whether they want an AI singer to sing the main song, serve as a backing vocalist, or simply provide direction.


Could you elaborate on Casperaki’s commitment to collaboration and its mission to complement rather than replace human creativity?


Absolutely. AI can do great things, but the challenge is always how you control it. As an artist, you’re not necessarily looking for a finished track, but you want to bring your own personality and apply your own creativity. Therefore, it’s key that the AI works alongside you and does exactly what you need it to do rather than go off and hallucinate. Look at the new Photoshop AI tool, for example, and how graphic designers use it. They can work on an image the way they always have, and then they select a small segment of the image, type in a text prompt and use the AI to apply the finishing touches – like brush away a cloud or add a tree. We want to provide the same level of control for musicians.


Very exciting news about your panel at SXSW in March! What can attendees expect from these discussions throughout the showcase?


We are very excited too. Besides our panel, we also have a booth there throughout the main four days, and we are also hosting a networking drinks event at their AI track on a premium slot on March 12th at 5pm. AI is a huge topic everywhere, and it’s no different when it comes to music. As for our panel discussion, we will touch base on the impact of AI for content creators and in the music industry in general. We will be exploring the tech shift and how it can be implemented and used to also shift and improve the current music business model.


How did the partnership with San Marino come about, and what was the process like in creating the four unique songs for the Eurovision Song Contest national selection competition?


Our founder, Mathias, previously worked with them on a Eurovision-related project back in 2018. Our main goal this year was to showcase how AI and humans could come together to create a song and also to see how good the output of these collaborations would be. In the end, we received dozens of submissions with song ideas generated by our platform, including lyrics and vocals. We chose the best ten, and then hosted a writing camp in London with some of the most incredible songwriters, producers, and singers. We used the generated songs as a base and idea to then develop them into something more professional. It was a wonderful process that showed us that collaboration is key moving forward. AI is here to stay, and if we work together, we can find a way to optimise and leverage our time while keeping creativity and productivity at its best. In the end, our Casperaki-generated song didn’t win the San Marino national final, but it was better than 50% of the human-generated entries, which we thought was a great success. The system will only get better with time.


And finally, How do you envision Casperaki’s innovative approach to music creation impacting the music industry in the future?


Well, we certainly hope to give as many people as possible the ability to express themselves through music. If you want to use fancy words, you could say we want to democratise music. We don’t think that whether you can write a great song should depend on whether you were lucky enough to learn an instrument as a child or whether you were born with a great voice. We’re providing tools for people who are creative and ambitious but who may lack the required skills in one or more departments. Consider a singer-songwriter who sits at home all day writing music, but doesn’t have the money to go into a studio to pay a producer for a draft production. That’s what we want to change. As I said, we’re about supporting creators, not replacing them. That’s why we get out of bed every day. To close, I want to quote TommyD, one of the producers who worked with us at the songwriting camp. He said: AI won’t take your job, but someone using AI will. I think that captures it. AI is here to say, and it’s all about how we use it to make us more productive.

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