Cork firm AudioSourceRE hits the right notes

Imagine the potential of software that can remove the vocals of John Lennon and Paul McCartney from original soundtracks and allow karaoke singers to sing along to the actual playing of The Beatles.

Cork startup AudioSourceRE hasdeveloped software which lets karaoke singers “be a Beatle, a Beach Boy or a member of the Eagles”, and is making plans to target a global karaoke market estimated to be worth over of €1.3bn.

Currently finalising a €1.1m seed- funding round, the company’s chief technology officer and co-founder Derry Fitzgerald said that in 2020 the company plans to develop sales in Asia, the home of karaoke and the art form’s largest market.

Although the company is less than a year old, it already has impeccable credentials in the field of sound separation technology. An early version of this technology, developed by Dr Fitzgerald, over 18 years, has been used to remix six Beach Boy tracks originally recorded in mono so they could be reissued in stereo.

A self-confessed “Beach Boys nut”, he created a stereo version of ‘GoodVibrations’ and offered it to the Beach Boys sound engineer in 2010. Two years later he was blown away when they contacted him to say they wanted to use his software.

In addition to receiving credit on four albums and getting to meet the band, this experience made Mr Fitzgerald realise that this technology hadcommercial potential.

With commercialisation funding from Enterprise Ireland he set to work in 2015 on turning the software, which at that stage was just a bunch of scripts which only he could understand, intoa product with commercial potential.

Through an Enterprise Irelandbusiness partner programme John O’Connell assisted Mr Fitzgeraldresearch the commercial potential of the software and then draw up adetailed business and investment plan for spinning the company out of Cork Institute of Technology.

When they set up AudioSourceRE at the Rubicon Centre in July last year, Mr O’Connellbecame CEO and Enterprise Ireland provided €50,000 in competitive start funding.

In October, the company launched two sound separation products under the DeMIX brand at AES Music Convention in New York and a third at the NAMM convention in California.

Dr Fitzgerald said these products can be used to reverse engineer music tracks and audio files back into individual instruments.

“Our software can literally separate sound — allowing users to easily and creatively reuse and repurpose music and audio for new compositions and audio content. It’s already been christened ‘Photoshop for audio’.”

The DeMIX products are designed to be used by professional audio engineers and the company has also had sales to DJs, producers, remixers, pre-mastering engineers and music recordingenthusiasts.

“We started selling online on our website and we now have a distributor in Japan and have recently signed adistribution deal for the US,” he says.

While sales of its first products have been going well, AudioSourceRE now has its eyes on a much bigger prize — the karaoke market in Asia where the company sees vast potential.

It is with the karaoke market in mind that the company has embarked ona €1.1m fundraising round which itexpects to complete by the end ofDecember.

The funding will be used foradditional R&D on the technology and to help scale the company which now has a staff of four.

“We plan to hire R&D staff, developers and marketing people, taking on an additional five or six people in the next six months,” said Dr Fitzgerald.

AudioSourceRE is now working with a partner, a large music conglomerate, in China for which it is currentlytesting an enterprise solution for their karaoke applications.

“The fastest way to scale is to have a partner use our technology to facilitate the creation of genuine karaoke backing tracks from their large music catalogue, in this case potentially 30 million music tracks,” said Mr Fitzgerald.