Australian developers Uncanny Valley have released MEMU, an AI-based songwriting engine that continuously creates new musical compositions.

According to their website, MEMU “takes small, catchy bites of music and turns them into songs and suggestions, just like a meme.”  In an interview with The World Intellectual Property Organization last year, cofounder Charlton Hill said MEMU “currently plays 24/7… and can compose 33,600 minutes of music a week, including many individual tracks.” The tracks can then be played or used in many different mediums, including DJ mixes, streaming and songwriting.

The future of songwriting and music production in the wake of AI learning has been a hot topic as of late. Musical content is constantly in demand, and AI is constantly learning at an extremely fast pace. As a result, its neural networks will be able to create fully mixed and mastered music in the near future.

MEMU plan to work in a more collaborative effort with artists and music IP holders while the technology develops. Artists and IP holders using MEMU are considered contributors, with MEMU creating traceable revenue streams and “emotional data” for both. A platform will also allow users to connect in MEMU in order to maximize and repurpose their ideas into other projects.

Beautiful The World

The earliest iteration of MEMU was used for Uncanny Valley’s award-winning track “Beautiful The World” in a Eurovision-Style AI competition in 2020. The competition was based around how AI’s deep learning power can be used creatively to produce music, with developers training deep learning neural networks on over 200 Eurovision songs. The neural network then created lyrics and melodies, leaving Uncanny Valley to organize the ideas into a full track.

A demo of MEMU is available to stream now. The content therein is generated from entries to the 2021 AI Song Contest.

Find more information on MEMU and Uncanny Valley on their official website.