Josplay Inc. launches first-of-its-kind database for African music
Josplay Inc., a music intelligence company that uses human expertise and artificial intelligence to enrich African music with the goal of improving discoverability and utilization rate by music recommendation engines, will today, Thursday, September 1, launch a first-of-its-kind database for music from the Mother Continent.
Known as the African Music Library (AML), it is a digital knowledge and database built to provide the global music industry with the most accurate and comprehensive understanding of African music.
The ultimate goal of AML, according to Josplay Inc., is to match the global acceptance of African music with adequate data by properly documenting the empirical and historical data about music made in Africa or by Africans in the diaspora.
The library catalogues information about artists, bands, record labels, their works, and how they are made – including instruments and genres.
The library’s information repository ranges from music credits that document who did what on any piece of recorded music to the detailed audio analysis of these works.
The library is launching on Thursday with data on over 3,000-plus artistes across Africa and over 10 million data points on recorded musical works. It also tracks over 100 genres, ranging from oldies like Adaha to new raves like Afrobeats and Amapiano.
Being a product of three years of work involving artificial intelligence and a team of researchers and editors across the continent, the African Music Library collects, studies, documents, and continuously verifies information on the creators and participants (record labels, publishers, writers, producers, etc.) of all recorded music in Africa or by Africans. The motivation to publish the library, and make the knowledge base open to the public, came from the failure of existing solutions to codify and classify African music satisfactorily.
Following the launch of the project’s first phase in September, subsequent releases will feature a more comprehensive creator’s category, which will include music writers, composers, and sound engineers, among others. This is aimed at the proper assignment of music credits, and royalty distribution. Other features will include deeper insights and analysis of musical elements from various traditional African genres. The project promises to be fully immersive and enlightening.
According to Emmanuel Ogala, co-founder and CEO of Josplay, “We foresee a future where Africans will be considered priority consumers of music, media, and information in their local contexts. Josplay is, therefore, building the data foundation for the music engineers, researchers, and musicologists that will participate in this future.”
He added: “We want innovators in the African music space to have the data needed to build applications that can satisfy every African with their natural taste in music.”
The library will be open to the public and invites everyone in the African music space – software engineers, creators, researchers, record labels, media platforms, and Performance Rights Organizations – to explore, contribute, and share accurate data on music from the continent and in the diaspora.
As part of the go-live series of events, Josplay Inc. is organising a virtual webinar that would host major music communities and the general public on the essence of this project.
The goal of this webinar is to create substantial awareness, introduce the AML project to its audiences in the various regions of the continent, and also spark-up meaningful conversations around the need for adequate documentation and easy availability of data of our music.
You can do your registration here.
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