Making Music With AI – And Doing So Ethically | Diaa El All, Founder & CEO of Soundful
06/04/24 • 28 min
Diaa El All is the founder and CEO of Soundful, which enables anyone to create brand new music in just a few seconds with AI. And on this episode of CRAFTED., we are literally making music.
We’re also talking about the ethics of using AI to make music. Diaa has been very outspoken about what he sees as the misguided practices of other AI+music companies that train their models by just scraping the web. At Soundful, they’ve taken a different approach: they are painstakingly building their own proprietary data by recording musicians playing one note at a time and then layering the notes to create music that sounds better than if you’d just sampled songs.
“We've done it. There is a way where technological advancement and working with the rights-holders and protecting them can co-exist together.”
We discuss:
Why Diaa stands with the music industry against what he sees as other companies' move fast & break things approach to AI
Diaa’s background as a classical musician, DJ, ghost producer, and founder
How Soundful built its data and how it layers sounds together to make music
Soundful’s origin story and how it emerged from Diaa’s work with AI and marketing automation
Why humans are so important when making music
Why music theory rules are important to follow – except when they’re not!
What to expect next... and how incredible AI voice cloning has become
***
CRAFTED. is brought to you in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run and verify applications anywhere – without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker's suite of development tools, services and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications.
CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where Dan Blumberg and team advise companies on product, discovery, growth, and experimentation.
Subscribe to CRAFTED., follow the show, and sign up for the newsletter 👉 Crafted.fm
***
Key Moments:
[02:01] Ethical AI in Music Creation: How Soundful builds its AI ethically, avoiding training on copyrighted materials and using proprietary data.
[05:00] Diaa’s journey from Cairo to the Royal Academy of London, and his various roles in the music industry before founding Soundful
[07:02] Soundful’s origin story
[10:10] Soundful's music creation process, including the use of music theory rules and proprietary data sets to generate tracks
[12:08] How Soundful manages the non-deterministic nature of AI to ensure unique, high-quality music outputs for users.
[14:36] How Soundful levels people up and why he’s so excited to level up that great singer who is not yet a great producer
[17:00] The hardest part of building Soundful - working with the music industry and winning their acceptance
[21:55] Predictions for the future, including advancements in voice cloning and the potential for democratizing creative opportunities.
Diaa El All is the founder and CEO of Soundful, which enables anyone to create brand new music in just a few seconds with AI. And on this episode of CRAFTED., we are literally making music.
We’re also talking about the ethics of using AI to make music. Diaa has been very outspoken about what he sees as the misguided practices of other AI+music companies that train their models by just scraping the web. At Soundful, they’ve taken a different approach: they are painstakingly building their own proprietary data by recording musicians playing one note at a time and then layering the notes to create music that sounds better than if you’d just sampled songs.
“We've done it. There is a way where technological advancement and working with the rights-holders and protecting them can co-exist together.”
We discuss:
Why Diaa stands with the music industry against what he sees as other companies' move fast & break things approach to AI
Diaa’s background as a classical musician, DJ, ghost producer, and founder
How Soundful built its data and how it layers sounds together to make music
Soundful’s origin story and how it emerged from Diaa’s work with AI and marketing automation
Why humans are so important when making music
Why music theory rules are important to follow – except when they’re not!
What to expect next... and how incredible AI voice cloning has become
***
CRAFTED. is brought to you in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run and verify applications anywhere – without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker's suite of development tools, services and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications.
CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where Dan Blumberg and team advise companies on product, discovery, growth, and experimentation.
Subscribe to CRAFTED., follow the show, and sign up for the newsletter 👉 Crafted.fm
***
Key Moments:
[02:01] Ethical AI in Music Creation: How Soundful builds its AI ethically, avoiding training on copyrighted materials and using proprietary data.
[05:00] Diaa’s journey from Cairo to the Royal Academy of London, and his various roles in the music industry before founding Soundful
[07:02] Soundful’s origin story
[10:10] Soundful's music creation process, including the use of music theory rules and proprietary data sets to generate tracks
[12:08] How Soundful manages the non-deterministic nature of AI to ensure unique, high-quality music outputs for users.
[14:36] How Soundful levels people up and why he’s so excited to level up that great singer who is not yet a great producer
[17:00] The hardest part of building Soundful - working with the music industry and winning their acceptance
[21:55] Predictions for the future, including advancements in voice cloning and the potential for democratizing creative opportunities.
Previous Episode
Asana’s Head of AI on the Profound Ways Work Is Changing | Paige Costello (Head of AI & Co-Head of Product Management at Asana)
Paige Costello is the the head of AI and co-head of product at Asana and on this episode of CRAFTED. we're exploring what it means to ship products with AI, how AI will change the way work gets done, and how to organize your teams for success in this brave new world.
We explore:
- How the future of work – and communicating about work – is changing
- Why Asana chose to create an “AI org” instead of a less centralized innovation approach
- How Asana ships — and measures the success of — AI-powered features, e.g. SmartStatus, that aim to take the drudgery out of work
- How product management is changing with the rise of AI
- Why running an A/B test is harder when a non-deterministic (i.e. unpredictable by design) GenAI tool is involved
- Why it’s so important to “get out of the building” and some of Paige’s favorite user research moments from doing so
- The latest with “PaigeBot” and what Paige hopes AI can do for her
***
CRAFTED. is brought to you in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run and verify applications anywhere – without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker's suite of development tools, services and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications.
CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where Dan Blumberg and team advise companies on product, discovery, growth, and experimentation.
Subscribe to CRAFTED., follow the show, and sign up for the newsletter 👉 Crafted.fm
***
Key Moments:
[02:17] AI-generated status reports: How Asana summarizes a project – or many projects – using AI. And why it needs to do so carefully.
[05:00] How to organize for innovation: How Asana organizes its teams to integrate AI and the strategies they employ for effective AI implementation.
[09:06] How AI will change the role of product managers and why the stochastic nature of AI will be something we all have to get used to
[14:26] Challenges of prototyping and scaling AI
[16:07] How Asana uses AI internally and how it dogfoods its own products
[18:17] Profound implications of AI + the future of work
[22:20] Will AI really help product managers get out of the building more? Or do we just find new excuses not to? And what Paige finds so powerful about “being in someone’s space”
[25:32] An update on “PaigeBot” and what Paige wishes a bot would do for her
Next Episode
How BetterUp Leverages AI + Human Coaches to Help People and Companies Flourish | Gabriella Rosen Kellerman (Chief Product and Innovation Officer)
Dr. Gabriella Rosen Kellerman is the Chief Product and Innovation Officer at BetterUp, a multi-billion dollar startup that helps people and companies level up. Through a combination of human coaching and AI, BetterUp is able to offer the kind of executive coaching that used to be reserved for... executives.
On this episode of CRAFTED. we dig into how BetterUp ships new products, proves they work, and what's next...
Key Moments:
[2:23 - 7:27] How BetterUp helps companies and employees level up
[7:27 - 11:15] How BetterUp build products — and why they have more than the typical product trio of product/design/engineering
[11:15 - 14:22] Launching the Group Coaching product, testing it, and scaling it (during the pandemic)
[14:22 - 17:42] “Kids in the candy store” – how BetterUp is building with GenAI after so many years of building with GOFAI (good old fashioned AI)
[17:42 - 20:38] Challenges as BetterUp has scaled up and what’s next for the company
[20:38 - 22:26] The “whitewater world of work” and what makes Gabriella optimistic about the future
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The book: Tomorrowmind
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CRAFTED. is brought to you in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run and verify applications anywhere – without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker's suite of development tools, services and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications. Learn more at Docker.com
CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where my team and I can help you take a new product from zero to one... and beyond. We specialize in early stage product discovery, growth, and experimentation. Learn more at modernproductminds.com
Subscribe to CRAFTED., follow the show, and sign up for the newsletter 👉 Crafted.fm
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