Startup-Centered AI Composition Market Energized by Large Corporation Capital

CJ ENM Becomes Second Largest Shareholder of Poja Labs Last Year
KT Acquires 'Juice' with AI Composition Technology

The domestic artificial intelligence (AI) composition market has reached its heyday. Large corporations, recognizing the growth potential of this market, have opened their wallets and made investments. Service launches and revenue generation are also gaining momentum.

On the 10th, CJ ENM unveiled the AI music provision service ‘VIODIO: CJ ENM Air,’ which allows the creation and utilization of essential music tracks for content production through AI. It can produce high-quality music tracks in just five minutes and also allows for rearrangement. Anyone can easily find and immediately use desired AI-generated music by simply searching with keywords such as mood, theme, or genre. Utilizing this service can drastically reduce the time and cost required to source about 100 music tracks per piece of content, such as a drama.

This service was developed by AI technology company Poza Labs. Poza Labs is a startup gaining attention in the digital music market with its advanced AI technology capable of creating customized songs for users. It systematizes all data necessary for composition, from music theory to sampling, enabling the production of music tracks that reflect mood, genre, instruments, and harmony (協和: the aesthetically pleasing and harmonious sound when two or more notes sound simultaneously).

The pioneers of domestic AI composition technology are startups like Poza Labs. This contrasts with overseas markets where big tech companies directly develop and enter as players. In May, Google developed an AI model called 'MusicLM' that creates music from text. It was trained on a dataset comprising 280,000 hours of music and generates music that fits the text input by users. Amazon also launched 'DeepComposer,' a service where AI composes music through machine learning when a simple melody is input.

The reason global big tech companies are actively developing AI composition technology is precisely because of the market’s growth potential. As video platform services such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram expand, the number of individual creators, called 'creators,' is also increasing. One of the biggest concerns for these creators is background music. AI-generated music can effectively replace existing songs that carry significant copyright burdens.

Market analysis firm Market.us forecasted that the global AI music generation market size will grow more than 11 times, from $229 million (approximately 300 billion KRW) last year to $2.66 billion (approximately 3.46 trillion KRW) by 2032.

Recently, aggressive investments by large domestic corporations recognizing the market potential have been made. In CJ ENM’s case, it acquired shares in Poza Labs last year, becoming the second-largest shareholder. CJ ENM plans to secure differentiated competitiveness by applying AI-generated music obtained through collaboration with Poza Labs to its drama and film content as well as new business areas such as the metaverse.

Park Hyunjin, CEO of Genie Music, explaining the AI music symbiotic ecosystem she aims to realize through 'genie.Re:La'

KT’s music platform subsidiary Genie Music acquired the AI startup 'Juice' last year. Like Poza Labs, Juice possesses AI arrangement and AI music generation technologies. In June, Genie Music and Juice launched the beta service of 'Genie Lira,' an AI arrangement service available to both individuals and professionals. By simply uploading an MP3, AI instantly creates a digital score, which users can edit and arrange. This means individuals can easily create remake music. The two companies also plan to implement a C2C (consumer-to-consumer) platform in the first half of next year, allowing users to share remake music they create with each other.

Additionally, 'Chilroen,' a startup developing the music creation platform OddYards, secured 2 billion KRW in investment from the eyewear chain brand 'Davich Eyewear' and financial IT service specialist 'Credit Line.'

As the AI composition market grows, the risks companies must bear are also increasing. A representative issue is copyright. Whether the data used for AI learning infringes copyright when AI creates works remains unclear not only in Korea but also internationally. There is concern that cases similar to those where generative AI developers were sued for unauthorized use of news content produced by media companies could occur in this market as well.

Moreover, under current copyright law, only 'human-created works' are recognized for copyright protection, meaning AI-created works do not receive legal protection, which is a significant burden on the market.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.