Fairly Trained - Boomy [PART 3] Ethics of genAI for music

Looking for an ethical tool that uses generative AI for creating music? Check out this profile of Boomy, a genAI music company that's certified as Fairly Trained.

May 23, 2024

This article provides a deep dive on Boomy, one of the companies working on generative AI for music who have been certified as Fairly Trained. It supports the upcoming Part 3 in our 8-part series “Unfair Use? Ethics of generative AI for music”, announced in this INTRODUCTION post on

6 'P's in AI Pods

This article series is not a substitute for legal advice and is meant for general information only.

Business and feature information is summarized from the company’s websites; LinkedIn; Crunchbase; PitchBook, where available; and publicly available reviews of one or more of these tools. Links are in the References section.

Boomy

Descriptions:

On Fairly Trained: “Boomy is a generative AI music platform where people create, publish, and monetize original songs - over 18 million to date.”
On LinkedIn: “Make Music with Generative AI”
On website: “Create original songs in seconds, even if you've never made music before. Submit your songs to streaming platforms and get paid when people listen. Join a global community of artists empowered by generative music”
On PitchBook: “The company's platform uses artificial intelligence to help users create original songs and get paid when people stream them, enabling people to create music without the need for any prior musical knowledge or experience.”

History & Partnerships

Boomy was founded in 2018. They are privately held (‘early-stage VC’), headquartered in Berkeley CA1. They currently have ~27 employees [at least 4 appear to be female-presenting] and 11 investors (VCs plus at least 1 individual angel). Their latest deal (mid 2022) was $4m.2

Major updates to Boomy were rolled out on Sept. 28, 2020, partially in response to the COVID pandemic.3 As of May 20, 2024, Boomy users have created over 19.6 million original songs.

Key Features

Boomy’s key value proposition is going beyond the generation of melodies to helping users get their music published & revenue-enabled. They are both a music generation service and a distribution service. The distribution service is exclusive; users cannot distribute through other services, and only songs created on Boomy can be distributed. 4 In addition to enabling Pro users to distribute and monetize their songs on streaming services, users can share, explore, and stream songs from Boomy’s homepage.

Boomy supports generation of musical melodies as well as adding vocals. They have also offered an experimental new “Auto-Vocal” feature that “takes any spoken or non-pitched audio you provide and uses it to chop, tune, and layer the audio as an improvised vocal line in your song”. 5

As of Nov. 2023, users can choose from 4 different categories of instruments, and can preview and customize instruments, drum kits, sound effects, and more. Boomy also offers Dolby remastering.

Training Data & Technology

Boomy’s FAQ asserts that “Boomy does not train its machine learning models on any copyrighted songs and has never ingested any such data that may be subject to copyright in its models. We are always evaluating opportunities to enhance our service. Should we choose to train our models using copyrighted material, we would only do so with explicit permission from rightsholders.” 6 This is consistent with their Fairly Trained certification.

Ownership, Usage Rights, & Pricing

Boomy claims every song is “totally original” and “unique”. Boomy owns all copyrights to songs created on the platform. Users can submit a request for copyright (pricing for copyright is not clear on the site). 7

As of June 6, 2023, they offer 3 plans (prices and quotas are per month), with additional plan offerings for “Music Professionals and Enterprises” to follow.8

“Free” - $0 - no downloads or commercial use. Create and edit songs with up to 25 song saves, and up to 3 “releases” with up to 12 songs per release. Basic song editing tools.
- As described in the Sept. 28, 2020 blog post, Free plan users were enabled to “earn revenue from up to 5 releases, no upgrades required”. This appears to have changed on June 6, 2023.
“Creator” - $9.99 - 10 MP3 downloads for non-commercial use (social media and livestreaming only). Up to 500 song saves, 5 releases with up to 25 songs per release. Advanced song editing tools.
“Pro” - $29.99 - Same benefits as Creator plus unlimited song saves, 25 MP3/WAV downloads, 10 releases. Allows non-commercial use in video, livestreaming, and your own songs, plus commercial use in podcasts, social media, and NFTs.

Boomy also offers Dolby® Remastering service for $9.99 per track.

For Pro users who monetize their songs, Boomy collects the associated revenue and credits 80% (net of fees) to the user’s Boomy account every month.

❓If you’re curious about the ethical posture of the big, well-known firms or smaller players who are not yet certified as Fairly Trained, subscribe (for FREE) to be notified of our upcoming posts (the parent PART 3 article, a post on major un-certified companies, a post on other un-certified companies) and the remainder of the series:

REFERENCES and ENDNOTES

Links to upcoming
6 'P's in AI Pods
articles

(coming soon)

Analysis page on 9 genAI music companies who are already certified as Fairly Trained (including this one)
PART 3 - top-level article on Who, What, & When in ethics of genAI for music