on 3 may 2022 soundcloud acquired musiio. i was in the office the day the papers were signed.

musiio's ai listens to music, which is harder than it sounds: audio reference search, automated tagging, playlisting, aimed at catalogues holding more tracks than any person will ever get through. hazel savage and aron pettersson founded it in june 2018, out of entrepreneur first's third singapore cohort, the same cohort archanan came out of, pitching at the same investor day. i had been tech lead there for about a year when the deal closed.

Hazel Savage seated on a conference stage mid-sentence, hands raised as she explains something, against a pale blue Web Summit backdrop.
hazel six months later, on the music notes stage at web summit, billed as vp of music intelligence at musiio by soundcloud. photo by ben mcshane / web summit via sportsfile, cc by 2.0.

hazel and aron went across as vp of music intelligence and vp of ai and machine learning, and soundcloud kept the team on. i went over to the soundcloud office in the states as incoming director of engineering for music intelligence. four years from a desk in a cohort room to this. congratulations to hazel, to aron, and to everyone who built it.

the team's next move was berlin. i decided not to go, and left in november.

soundcloud's announcement · soundcloud · musiio, while it was still musiio (the domain points at soundcloud now)