AiMi launches an artificial intelligence app that creates music on your phone 24/7

The AiMi app turns your phone into a 24/7 composer of beautiful, happy AI music.

AiMi chief executive Edward Balassanian

A US firm has teamed up with Melbourne developers to build an app that generates music on your phone. The app called AiMi launched this week and uses artificial intelligence to compose music.

AiMi chief executive Edward Balassanian said the app based its music on a library of beats, anything from 4 bars to 16 bars, developed by real artists. The AI uses those beats to create its own music.

Mr Balassanian said you can listen for hours without hearing the music repeat. “The AI is actually running on your phone, and it's generating music in real time as you're listening to it,” he told The Australian.

Users don’t directly control what plays, but they can switch the “energy level” between 1 and 10. Level one is a slower beat, is relatively relaxing and quieter whereas 10 is fast and prominent.

“As you adapt the energy levels, it generates different kinds of music, both by choosing different loops which are sort of musical phrases, and by changing the composition techniques.

“We might use different techniques at energy 10 to create more tension, more release, more energy, by not just making it faster but also by making the music composition feel more energetic.

AiMi artificial intelligence driven music app.

“We also have to do things that actual DJs do when they perform, which is give your ear a break and give the energy level some ebbs and flows, so that we can keep you engaged with that high energy content without wearing you out too quickly.”

Computer generated music has been a mixed bag. Some of it sounds durge-like and depressing, and projects to revive classical compositions such as Huawei’s attempt to finish Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony with AI has driven some traditionalists to despair.

Before the pandemic, an orchestra in Bonn, Germany was due to play an AI-composed Beethoven 10th symphony, composed by extrapolating from notes he had scribbled down.

Mr Balassanian said he wanted AiMi to generate music that wasn’t depressing.

“That was one of our goals. We wanted to make happy music, and a lot of the AI music out there is very dark. It just turns out it's easier to make dark music than it is to make happy (music).”

He said you can use AiMi for 30 minutes per day free but beyond that you need a subscription – US$5.99 per month. It runs on iPhones and iPads now and Mr Balassanian says Android is on the way.

AiMi artificial intelligence driven music app

His might sound a modest enterprise, but Mr Balassanian sees a future in selling the app to public venues such as shopping centres. In future your weekly stock up at the supermarket might be to the sounds of AI music.

He said commercial users would avoid copyright fees. “The content that you're listening to is all our content and we don't have any licensing restrictions on the music that you're listening to.”

He said commercial pricing would be “disruptive”.

AiMi uses in-house composers to create its base loops but the company plans to announce actual known artists who will create their own loops for the AI to repurpose. That includes voice.

“Instead of listening to a song, we can listen to an endless expression by that artist,” he said.

Mr Balassanian has a computer science background and is a former Microsoft employee who has spent more than 25 years founding more than 20 start-ups.

He said he had recruited Dr Pat Hutchings from Monash University’s SensiLab in Melbourne to be the lead scientist for this venture. “We have a team of six in Melbourne. All of them are musicians, all of them are music lovers, and they're all gifted computer engineers.”