GasLab (Generative AI Solutions Lab), a GenAI music platform created by DJ and producer Reinier Zonneveld, is launched this week, backed by $1 million in pre-seed funding.
GasLab is on a mission to keep creatives in business in the age of generative AI, protecting the future of the creative industry by ensuring the artists whose music shapes AI-generated tracks are recognised, credited and able to share in the value created.
Investors in this round include Eric Demuth, co-founder and executive Chairman of Bitpanda, and Bas Beerens, founder of WeTransfer and serial entrepreneur, alongside other European entrepreneurs.
GasLab gives the music industry a complete end-to-end system for AI music. Artists and labels who allow for their music to be used in training its AI model will be able to see exactly how their work helped shape each generated track, and will be paid for it.
The system’s proprietary technology attributes each AI generation, making the system transparent and fair. Creators will instantly see which tracks and artists shaped the song that they have generated.
Zonneveld trained as a classical pianist from the age of three before teaching himself electronic production. He launched the Filth on Acid label in 2017, holds the world record for longest electronic music live set, and has consistently been ranked in the top 30 DJs of the world in the past five years.
He and his long-term friend and business partner Cas Luuring began working with machine learning eight years ago, leading to the creation of Zonneveld’s own AI model, named R2, which he trained on his own catalogue and which he plays back-to-back against at festivals
. Zonneveld and Luuring, together with former VC partner and Uber general manager Thijs Emondts form the core team behind the company.
Reinier Zonneveld, Co-founder, mil, said:
“My academic background in economics and mathematics fuelled a curiosity for what algorithms could bring to music.
But first and foremost I am a musician and I believe it must always pay to be an artist. The current state of generative AI has a major flaw: It takes from artists but gives nothing back.
This is a problem that has to be solved if we want there to be any semblance of a creative industry in the future. So, I set out to solve it. And that’s how we came up with GasLab.”
Generative AI can now produce a finished track in seconds, but what most tools cannot – or will not – do is show which music influenced that track, or give the artists behind that music a fair stake in the value it creates.
This attribution and compensation gap has become one of the defining questions in the music industry's relationship with AI, and generative AI in a broader sense. GasLab has been built to close it, to allow the music industry to take back control of what is theirs
Users can generate AI music on GasLab that is based on music only provided by artists and labels who are happy to be on there. GasLab's proprietary attribution model, the Digital Notary, compares each generated output with the participating catalogue and creates an attribution record that logs the participating music and rights holders that contributed to the result, on both a master and a publishing level.
Every track receives a permanent ID and a watermark linked to its record and GasLab assigns every artist who is attributed on that track, an economic right to it, so if an AI-generated track blows up, original artists share in its success.
This Digital Notary underpins how GasLab shares revenue with contributing artists and rights holders. When GasLab earns from subscriptions or releases, the record provides the basis for sharing that revenue with the contributors
The investment round will support GasLab through its next phase on its journey to become the leading global GenAI platform for music that is transparent and fairly attributed, with an attribution engine that could also serve other GenAI platforms.
Zonneveld is inviting people interested in creating music on GasLab to join the guest list for private testing invites, ahead of a later public launch. Also, each musician, label or other musical rights holder who is interested to know more, can contact the team to learn more about joining his movement.