Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Abbey Road Red Incubator

May 8, 2024

UMusicLift asked Abbey Road Red’s Innovation Manager, Karim Fanous, and Programme Manager, Anthony Achille, to present their leading music tech incubation programme, and why it could be the perfect fit for you as a founder looking to bring new, universally adopted technologies into the music industry. Read on for more information about Red and how to apply.

What is Abbey Road Red?

Abbey Road Red is our music tech incubation programme at Abbey Road Studios, a completely bespoke six-month programme and the first of its kind in Europe when it was launched in 2016.

We’re in our 7^th year of operation and have incubated 20 startups introducing value-adding technologies across the music value chain.

We took inspiration for our name from the Record Engineering Development Department (REDD), Abbey Road’s pioneering in-house team of engineers who introduced universally adopted technologies to music alongside their offsite colleagues at EMI Hayes.

These included the blueprint of the modern recording console in 1958 (Redd .17), the first British Tape Recorders in 1948 (BTRs 1 to 3) and the first ever parametric equaliser in 1951 (RS 56 Curve Bender).

They sit alongside other incredible innovations seen within the walls of Abbey Road Studios in our 90+ year history including stereo, invented by Alan Blumlein in 1934 with the first stereo recordings at Abbey Road in Studios Two and Three, early experiments in quadraphonic sound, and automatic double tracking.

Why did you launch Red?

We were thinking about our innovation legacy at the studios and looked outside to see talented founders with great ideas but who were stuck or needed help to develop them.

That help included understanding the industry strategically, how it works and who to talk to, where the genuine problems were as opposed to perceived problems, and how they could help the industry solve them.

With our experience and position at Abbey Road Studios and within the UMG family we felt we were ideally placed to help.

We also liked that we were building on our unique innovation history inside the studio walls and taking that view outwards, looking to help talented founders introduce the next set of universally adopted technologies into the music industry.

What technologies do you look for?

Our founders have delivered ground-breaking technologies in adaptive music, assistive composition, smart instruments, recommendation and classification, royalty tracking and accuracy, music as medicine, data and reporting, incremental royalties for UGC and more.

One of the great things about taking Red out of the building into the wider industry value chain with the help of our Universal Music colleagues has been to expand our traditional focus on audio creation and production technologies out to value adding technologies anywhere across the whole value chain.

What are some examples of alumni who have been through the Red programme?

- AImusic, an IP platform for early adaptive music and which was acquired by Apple early last year

- Audoo, an automated performance royalty tracking/reporting technology which makes smart audio meters that listen and report performance royalties in real-time, and has raised £15m+ from investors including Sir Elton John, Bjorn Ulvaeus, and MPL, rolling out its audio meters globally including a deal recently with PRS

- LifeScore, a high quality adaptive recorded audio platform which has landed deals and activations with YOTO, Bentley, Audi and Twitch

- MyPart, an AI song search and catalogue discovery platform utilising state-of-the-art machine learning techniques and advanced lyrical & musical feature extraction methods

- DAACI, a rules based assistive composition engine based on PhD research with the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Artificial Intelligence and Queen Mary University of London, has launched partnerships with BIMM University and have launched the open beta of their first project Natural Drums

- MediMusic, a music for wellness company which enables the prescription and provision of music as medicine to ease pain and anxiety using its proprietary algorithms, informed by machine learning and digital fingerprints

: DAACI are welcomed onto the incubation programme.

: MediMusic pitching at Abbey Road Red Demo Day 2023.

What does Abbey Road Red look for when scouting for companies, and is the programme open to companies to apply to outside of the UK?

The programme is open to startups from all corners of the world!

One of the key things we look for is a special idea which we sense will bring new value to our industry and answer some of the key problems whilst providing new opportunities for artists and rightsholders.

Other key things we look out for are:

Differentiated and proprietary technology or approach
Strong founders and a team with the right experience and grit to drive forward
Pre-seed funding and enough resource to get through our six month programme and to start scaling with afterwards
A Beta or MVP that is functional and can be tested
Ideally a team poised to develop its MVP and prepare to bring it to market, which are the two areas where we can help the most

What does the Abbey Road Red team structure look like?

Red is run by a two-person full time team at Abbey Road picked for their expertise, experience and knowledge of both the music and startup worlds, that’s us! We are also able to learn from and lean on the extraordinary minds and experience of our Abbey Road Studios and Universal Music group leadership and colleagues.

Red has a senior internal working group at Abbey Road Studios which meets regularly and an advisory board which meets bi-monthly comprising leadership across both Abbey Road Studios and Universal Music Group. We have built strong collaborative relationships with key colleagues at Universal and are networked across the company globally.

Our mentor network is curated in the same way. We have chosen brilliant individuals with direct experience and expertise in legal, licensing, IP, M&A, big tech, media, brands, strategy and more.

All of this alongside our global music industry network gives Red a unique and significant value adding foundation for our founders.

How Does Abbey Road Red Operate?

Once we have worked with founders on diligence and approved their onboarding with our advisory board, we create a completely bespoke incubation programme split broadly into three two-month phases and agreed upon with our founders.

Our programme deployment consists of feedback meetings, workshops, business development introductions, investor events and more; as well as these standard approaches we will be as creative as possible to look for value adding development opportunities for our founders.

Being Abbey Road Red, we are also delighted to provide other value adds unique to Abbey Road Studios, including:

The Abbey Road Red Demo Day in Studio Two, a yearly event to showcase founder journeys and MVPs to a hand-picked stakeholder audience of label team-mates, tech, investors, media and more
Use of our Abbey Road Studio Three and Gatehouse for a day each to produce recording sessions, promotional media, roundtables or events
Use of Abbey Road’s restaurant and meeting rooms for meetings and hot desking when available
In general we welcome our founders into the Abbey Road Studios family and building with free roam to pop in and hang out, host meetings and work in our restaurant any time they like

: Karim Fanous introducing Demo Day 2023.

: Abbey Road Red – Demo Day 2020 – Networking.

What are some technologies that Red is looking for?

We’ve found that the best ideas surprise us in terms of their timing or ignoring trend convention. We’re open to hearing about anything as long as it meets our criteria above and is a genuine value add to the music industry and its artists, so don’t be shy and please get in touch. But if you want a list of stuff we’re interested in, then some of it is:

Audio technologies to support game development
Music for wellness deployments
Responsibly trained assistive AI, in every area from decision making to studio and recording production assistants, music collaboration, creator tools and more
Classification, recommendation and data creation to empower amazing uses of music

What is the best way to get in touch with Abbey Road Red?

Talk to us. Even if you think your idea is early we’d still be delighted to hear from you and chat. Email Red@AbbeyRoad.com.