After the success of my Young Innovators Award project in 2020, I was invited to apply for the Young Innovators Award Next Steps grant which is a £50,000 grant designed to help Young Innovators Award grant winners to continue building on their innovation. Out of over 150 entrepreneurs who were eligible to apply, my application won out along with just 15 others.
Here are the details of how I will be applying the grant to Aux. This post was originally published on the Record of the Day:
Aux App (www.aux.app) the collaboration and file sharing platform for producers, musicians and podcasters, has received £50,000 funding from Innovate UK’s Young Innovators Next Steps Award. The grant recognises trailblazing young entrepreneurs, giving them financial support to accelerate their business growth. For serial tech entrepreneur and Aux founder, Ben Bowler (pictured below), this crucial support will go towards the development and launch of the platform’s ground-breaking AI technology, designed to support the next generation of music and content creators.
Over the next twelve months, Aux users can expect this AI technology to be sprinkled across all parts of the app. Tracks and DAW files will be tagged automatically allowing deep filtering and searching of a musician’s own music projects, which is not possible with any other tool.
Via this technology, which ultimately allows the Aux app to learn the style of a user’s productions, it will generate ‘connection suggestions’ in the wider community based on that profile.
Once artists upload several projects to the system, the technology will also create a private profile of their music that will be used to make connections in the Aux Guide – a networking directory of thousands of potential collaborators, music businesses and services such as record labels, publishers, studios and rehearsal spaces, tailored specifically to them.
These two functions of the AI software combined, meet one of the most common needs of early-stage artists: how to find collaborators and build their network.
The experienced startup founder and developer, Ben Bowler – who built, launched, and sold, DJ live streaming platform Chew.tv and founded Indie Tech Ltd – commented,
“Aux is focused on bringing the latest tech to bear to improve the way that musicians work, from backing up and storing sessions, to opening up new collaboration opportunities around the world. The funding and support from Innovate UK and the Next Steps Award Grant gives the Aux team the ability to focus on how AI technology can be used to help early-stage musicians find collaborators and take their careers to the next level.”
Hundreds of creatives are already experiencing a new way of working using the pioneering Aux App (launched in Beta in late 2021) where they can store, share and collaborate on audio files in a seamless and more simple way, with anyone in the world. Check out this short video to find our more.
Aux App offers double WeTransfer’s upload speeds and a market-leading 10GB of free storage, but’s much more than the sum of these parts. It’s an indispensable, future-facing platform which simplifies the remote music-making process using tools designed to further careers.