TikTok owner ByteDance has debuted a new AI-powered app called Ripple, which is used for music generation. The new app makes it easier for content creators to generate and edit music for their content including short-term videos for platforms like TikTok.
The Ripple model is trained on music owned by ByteDance and licensed to the company. The latest development adds to the company’s growing interest in music creation apps after launching Lawf and SpongeBand, which are all stand-alone apps.
An invite-only app
Ripple, which is currently available in the U.S. only, is undergoing testing in a closed beta environment. ByteDance has indicated the company currently has no other rollout plans yet, but the app is available on an invite-only basis to testers.
Those willing to try it can visit Ripple.club, download a link for the app on iOS, and request an invite. Ripple has two significant features; a virtual recording studio and a ‘Melody to Song’ generator.
While Ripple allows creators to share their music on TikTok and other social networking platforms, it cannot distribute it on the TikTok library.
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Reducing the music creation barrier
The application is designed to help creators in the same way that portable smart digital audio workstations (DAWs) do.
Unlike the DAWs that require prior skill and experimentation, Ripple is much simpler to help creators to quickly generate original songs.
“Ripple is designed to inspire musical creativity and help musicians, artists and composers express themselves,” a ByteDance spokesperson told MBW in a statement.
“We’re excited to see how creators use Ripple to tap into their creativity to soundtrack their own short form videos.”
The Melody to Song feature allows users to simply hum a melody into a phone mic and Ripple generates the instrumentals such as drums and piano.
Using the virtual recording studio enables users to record, trim, cut, and edit audio files using mobile phones.
The application does not create vocal content, it leaves that to the user, while it only generates the instrumentals.
Ripple generates various genres based on what the user hums into the phone mic. However, the app cannot generate a full soundtrack based on a few seconds the user prompts into the phone mic. The length of the song outputted will match the length of the song inputted.
ByteDance told Engadget that the company respected its artists’ rights after there have been concerns over the data that is used to train AI systems and algorithms.
Recently, OpenAI was accused of violating the copyrights and privacy of individuals by using “stolen private data” to train and develop its products including ChatGPT.
Tech giants and generative music models
According to Music Business Worldwide (MBW), there has been a trend in the global market characterized by a rise in mobile music. Meanwhile, Tech giants have been busy supporting generative music models.
The likes of Meta, Google, and Microsoft have carried out research on the opportunities available before developing their own tools.
Meta has already released its text-to-music generation tool called MusicGen, trained on 20,000 hours of licensed music, according to the company.
Singapore-based BandLab is one of the most significant players in the music production app market with its flagship music-making app accounting for over 60 million registered users.
The company offers a variety of features such as cross-platform DUW studio and the AI music generator SongStarter.
With ByteDance launching Ripple, this will increase competition to BandLab.
Another business in this space is Splice, which recently launched its create a stack feature. This reportedly uses AI in matching sounds from across its splice sound catalogue. The company has also introduced an AI power music generation app called CoSo.
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