Strofe is a new tool for creating game music using AI or machine learning. It runs in the browser and is currently free with future pricing discussed on /r/gamedev.
We’re thinking something like $1-3 to buy an individual song on top of a subscription service in the range of 5-10 to make/own unlimited songs. That way folks who just need one can grab one or if you have a big project you can subscribe.
In terms of details on how the AI was trained and regarding copyright concerns:
It’s worth mentioning a lot of these legal cases are based around the offending artist’s awareness of the song that was “copied” or stolen from. In our case, the AI was trained on a dataset of 100% public domain MIDI files and thus is absolutely “unaware” of any currently DMCA protected musics…..as much as a machine could be aware of anything I suppose.
In any case, melody is not the only indicator of ‘identity’ to a song. The artists who wrote “Blurred Lines” got their pants sued off for more or less copying a “vibe” from Marvin Gaye’s family.
I think it’s worth distinguishing music-focused legal battles that are between 2 artists (like the above example) and someone who has taken/used an artist’s songs without permission. Those are the kinds of cases you see mostly today and those are also the largest volume of legal cases here. Twitch streamers or Youtubers getting take down notices and stuff like that. In both of these cases Strofe helps to insulate you from any real legal issues.
At any rate – rest assured it’s something of a mathematical impossibility that you get 2 identical Strofe songs!
And finally, some details on future features:
You’re right about the samples – we’re currently working on licensing some better ones! We’re just a few months in so we grabbed some copyright-free samples to get an MVP out the door.
You’ll be able to download in mp3 and MIDI! We’re currently working on .ogg as well. I think some DAWs will actually convert a MIDI file to sheet music but for now that’s what we’ve got going on.
You might like our QnA chat sessions that we have every Friday at 10AM PST in our Discord Channel! It’s a fun time talking about all things music/Strofe/AI/startups/games
Key links
You can learn more about Strofe and see it in action creating AI powered music in the video below.