Premium AI Mastering Service Masterchannel Announces Full Launch & Partnership With amuse Music Tech Company

- Masterchannel is now fully launched at: masterchannel.ai

The Norwegian-based AI-driven mastering service Masterchannel has announced its full launch and a partnership with the digital music company amuse.

The partnership is the first time amuse has engaged in a music tech partnership. It will see amuse marketing Masterchannel's revolutionary technology to their user base of thousands of musicians and artists at a discounted price.

Masterchannel soft-launched in the summer of 2021, offering industry-grade audio mastering powered by the latest AI research. Masterchannel's proprietary algorithm mimics the thought processes of a human mastering engineer to deliver superior results. A fully autonomous solution, it takes the quality of a mixed song to studio grade quality in less than ten minutes. Other AI-driven products on the market compare the tracks users upload to existing songs and genres which Masterchannel believe is too limiting.

Masterchannel was co-founded by the superstar DJ Tom "Matoma" Stræte Lagergren - himself one of the most popular producers in the world, with over three billion streams amassed of his tracks - alongside German Mastering Engineer and Audio Researcher Simon Hestermann and Norwegian serial entrepreneur Christian Ringstad Schultz. The three share a burning desire to be a positive change to the music industry.

Masterchannel aims to democratise the mastering process, offering a premium service at an affordable price, and per track instead of subscription. This flexibility will be hugely attractive to smaller labels with limited recording budgets, and also opens up opportunities for artists to supply studio-level sound enhancement in earlier demo versions of their tracks.

Since announcing itself, Masterchannel has attracted attention from around the world. It recently completed a $350,000 round of pre-seed funding led by StartupLab, the most active early stage investor in Norway, with angel investors including the world-renowned Norwegian artist Ane Brun. The team is now further expanding its team and new services to attract a wider mass of creatives.

Tom "Matoma" Stræte Lagergren says: "Democratising the industry and high-quality audio is something I feel very strongly about, so I'm so proud to be involved with Masterchannel. Its unique AI achieves a different and, in my opinion, superior result to anything else out there, and enables new and upcoming artists to achieve studio-quality recordings at a low cost which levels the playing field for them."

Erik Ljungqvist, Director of Product at amuse, says: : We are very happy to partner up with Masterchannel and provide our artists with tools that will help them elevate their work to an even greater level. Amuse is all about simplifying and democratising the process of releasing your music to the world, and this partnership adds another dimension to that mission.

Christian Ringstad Schultz, Co-founder and CEO Masterchannel, says: ”When we founded Masterchannel, one of our main goals was to allow artists to focus on the creative part, and not technicalities like mastering, while still getting premium sound quality at an affordable price. Supporting independent artists’ careers is something we strive for and a value we share with amuse, as both our companies work towards democratising the music industry.”

Simon Hestermann, Co-founder and CTO Masterchannel, says: “The shift we see in the creative industries is that creators are becoming aware of the powerful potential AI-driven tools can unleash for them. It’s not about whether they will become mainstream, it’s about what those tools will look like and who they will benefit when they do, and our mission is to tailor them to every artist’s true needs.”

Masterchannel is a Norwegian company founded in 2020 and offers a best-in-class AI-driven music mastering solution. The company recently raised over $350,000 in investment via StartupLab, the most active early stage investor in Norway. StartupLab also additionally announced Masterchannel as part of its Accelerator batch 11 where selected companies receive extra support. Masterchannel is now also part of the King’s 20 Accelerator in London. Its co-founders are:

- Simon Hestermann: Co-founder and CTO. Simon is a Mastering and Software Engineer and a former Lead DSP Engineer at Worldcoin. He was also an Audio Researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT and holds a patent in object-based spatial audio mastering.

- Christian Ringstad Schultz: Co-founder and CEO. He is currently on leave from his position as a PhD in Data-driven business models. Christian was co-founder of the web-based gaming company Tiltspot.tv and the Irish gaming technology conference DGC. He has been a producer and DJ for 14 years.

- Tom Stræte Lagergren: Better known as the world famous DJ and music producer Matoma. Tom has achieved over 3 billion streams worldwide and collaborated with world-famous artists incl. Mike Posner, Becky Hill, The Vamps, and Dua Lipa. Tom holds a bachelor degree in Music Technology from the Norwegian University of Science & Technology.

Changing the game since 2017, amuse gives free music distribution and empowering tools to artists and their teams across the globe. By using music consumption data, amuse finds, licenses and builds cutting-edge services for tomorrow’s platinum-selling independent talent. Based out of Stockholm, Sweden, amuse was founded by music industry executives with a collective vision to redefine artist discovery and label deals.