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 7th 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?
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- AImusic, an IP platform for early adaptive music and which was acquired by Apple early last year
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- 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
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- LifeScore, a high quality adaptive recorded audio platform which has landed deals and activations with YOTO, Bentley, Audi and Twitch
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- MyPart, an AI song search and catalogue discovery platform utilising state-of-the-art machine learning techniques and advanced lyrical & musical feature extraction methods
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- 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
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- 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!