Universal Music Group and Sony Music Support SoundPatrol Neural Fingerprinting Research

SoundPatrol, a newly formed research lab working on neural fingerprinting and large music models, announced a first-of-a-kind collaboration with Universal Music Group (UMG) and Sony Music. SoundPatrol says that its solutions — made possible through a patent-pending forensic AI model for audio-video fingerprinting — can protect artists from the unchecked copyright infringement activity coming from AI music generators.

On Tuesday, October 15, in New York, Sony, together with four music streaming services and an important number of music industry partners promoted a press event to announce the new 360 Reality Audio music ecosystem. This follows the presentations made early at CES 2019 and a repeat of the demonstrations at IFA 2019 in Berlin. At this event, Sony announced the upcoming commercial availability of 360 Reality Audio, an immersive audio experience utilizing object-based spatial audio technology.

Sony Corporation announced that 360 Reality Audio content, which offers a new immersive music experience for listeners, will be made available on the new Amazon Echo Studio with Amazon Music HD to customers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan later this year. Sony's 360 Reality Audio is an immersive audio experience utilizing MPEG-H object-based spatial audio technology from Fraunhofer IIS.

At CES 2019, Sony is not focusing so much on products and mainly highlighting content and experiences instead. Among those, Sony is promoting an all new music experience called "360 Reality Audio,” delivered by MPEG-H object-based spatial audio technology developed in collaboration with Fraunhofer IIS and promoted as “a new musical ecosystem for content creation, distribution and music playback.”

Why is it so easy to find an audio enthusiast claiming that his new headphones, DAC, preamplifier, or pair of speakers “completely changed his perception of the music” and “made it possible to hear things in a totally new way,” and yet so many consumers cannot actually hear the difference when listening to high-resolution audio?