Overview of Music Licensing Platforms
Music licensing platforms for short videos, advertising, games, and other visual media represent a significant industry that garners considerable interest from wealthy private investors.
Recent Developments in the Industry
The Epidemic Sound of Sweden was appraised at 1.4 billion dollars with 450 million dollars in funding during 2021, where Blaxtone Growth (Bxg) and EQT Growth made investments in the company. Epidemic Sound is reportedly preparing for an IPO.
Meanwhile, in China, TikTok parent company ByteDance has seen its valuation rise to around 300 billion dollars as of November 2024, according to reports, and is developing a service that could revolutionize the global music licensing landscape.
ByteDance owns a service called Easyode, billed as a “universal musical platform.”
The introduction of the Easyode platform is likely to become a hot topic in the global music industry.
There is limited information available online regarding its launch, and ByteDance has not responded to MBW’s inquiries about the platform’s ambitions or operational details.
According to the US Copyright Office, discovered by MBW, BYTEDANCE, through its ambiguous subsidiary Lemon Inc., has submitted two Easyode-related trademarks, one for the name and another for its logo.
As illustrated below, one of the trademarks has been officially registered, while the other is still pending review.
The trademarks were registered across various categories, including: “Services for music licensing, namely, commercial management of licensing music from others” and “Mobile applications that enable users to license, purchase, exchange, upload, compose, record, load, and edit music, songs, and albums.”
According to the Easyode site, the service claims to provide “high-quality tracks and sound effects for use in both new and traditional media projects, as well as other music-related services.”
The platform boasts a library of “60,000 rights cleared tracks.”
Additionally, the website describes that Easyode “offers music customization with various style and duration parameters.”
Users can upload a video for which they want to license music, and the platform will suggest tracks from its library that it deems suitable for the visual content.
Easyode also allows users to upload reference tracks to “analyze the rhythms and structure of the music.”
According to Easyode: “If you find that the samples meet your needs, you can provide your contact information on the ‘Settings Service’ page. Otherwise, please help us by providing a sample track for analysis and style configuration.”
Easyode’s terms of use stipulate that users must “confirm and agree that the user content published and uploaded during their use of Easyode services is created or legally licensed to them.”
The platform also includes a disclaimer: “We respect intellectual property rights and ask that you do the same.”
It adds: “As a condition for your access and use of the services, you agree not to infringe upon the intellectual property rights of any individual while using the services.”
However, one of the most intriguing features of the Easyode website is not just its functionalities, but the potential development team behind it at ByteDance.
In the lower-left corner of the site, there’s a link to the copyright attributed to the ByteDance Yourself team—a name associated with MBW’s extensive coverage of TikTok’s and ByteDance’s musical activities.
In March of last year, we revealed several in-depth reports on ByteDance’s ambitions in AI-generated music.
In one of those articles, we highlighted significant research being conducted by ByteDance’s Speech, Audio, and Music Intelligence team, which has emerged as a global priority for the company.
One of the research projects details a generative model called Melody, which, according to ByteDance’s research, trained on 257,000 hours of music derived from 6.4 million audio files.
We also covered the various American patents and trademarks secured by ByteDance and its partner Lemon SUV, which aids in IP protection for technologies related to artificial intelligence.
According to Easyode’s website, the platform “Adheres to Byteplus.”
Byteplus was established by ByteDance in 2021; it is reported as a new unit expected to market its AI technology.
ByteDance, through its Lemon Inc. division, holds trademarks in the United States for Byteplus, which appears to have been officially registered in May 2023.
The trademark documentation indicates coverage for data production and data analytics.
This brand also encompasses “Machine learning based on music generation and machine language translation; consulting services regarding artificial intelligence, data analytics, and machine learning.”
Byteplus is featured in the corporate structure chart of BYTEDANCE, as evidenced in the image below.
It is essential to clarify that we do not imply that any music available on Easyode is AI-generated.
In reality, we cannot determine whether this is the case.
According to Easyode’s terms of service, “All music available on the site was either created or licensed by Easyode.”
The site also states that its library of 60,000 tracks is “cleared of rights,” which includes “popular background music commonly utilized in short applications,” featuring tracks created by various music producers and studios.
TikTok’s parent company quietly launched a music licensing platform called EasyOde
