In the era where the global music industry is experiencing unprecedented growth, it is no surprise that the landscape of music creation is rapidly involving. Ranked as the 8th Largest Global Music Market in International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI)’s 2024 report, Canada’s market grew by 12.19% last year, reaching US$659.6 M in revenues in 2024. These strong numbers depict the intense demand for music. The need of the hour is democratization of music-generating platforms to make musicians, artists and creators feel inspired to craft their own music. This is what Co-Founders, Jeff Lupker and Jason Kowalcyzk, aim to unleash as the new age of creativity in music through Staccato AI.
An AI-powered music and lyrics creation platform, Staccato AI sparks inspiration for artists and creators worldwide to create their own unique melodies and lyrics. Guiding the users to generate their own musical building blocks, Staccato makes it easier for musicians and creators to bring their ideas to life. How? For artists, they can take the traditional approach, record a piece on their choice of instrument, and this powerful tool will continue generating music, except not completing the entire song. On the other hand, for creators who have an idea in mind, but struggle to communicate their ideas through a musical instrument, Staccato helps them share their thoughts through the text feature. “We’re trying to be with you along the process to help get you to spur on new ideas and take in new directions, so that our AI can suggest better stuff for you, but we want to still let you be the main spark,” says Lupker.
Reflecting on their journey, Lupker shares how he found the initial inspiration for Staccato AI while pursuing his PhD from the Don Wright Faculty of Music at Western University. Being a musician himself, Lupker was looking for ways to produce and perform music that could help him be more creative and productive in bringing his ideas to life. With a knack for tech and passion for music, he witnessed the initial magic and development of ChatGPT while pursuing his PhD. “When I first saw ChatGPT, I was excited about its potential. I started looking at ways to rearchitect ChatGPT to make it work for music as well and so, I spent an extra year doing my PhD, just to figure out the way in which I can use technology to integrate this tool, and build it into the software,” shares Lupker. Surrounded by musicians, Lupker knew this was the next technological innovation that artists were looking for until he realized that Staccato need not be limited to only musicians – it could be for anyone who has a creative spirit behind them!
Determined to pursue this full-time, Lupker soon realized that he needed support on the Staccato team to help him on the financial and operational side of the business. That is when he called on his long-time friend, Jason, to join the Staccato team. “Over just a few months, my role expanded as I got more enthralled and impressed by everything that we were doing. So, I soon took over tasks that are way beyond accounting and finance, including sales, marketing, and fundraising-related tasks,” shares Kowalcyzk. With an HBA in Accounting and Finance from Ivey Business School at Western University, Kowalcyzk built a strong career as an Investigator and Forensic Accountant for years until he decided to take the leap into entrepreneurship. A believer of giving artists the much-needed full creative control, Kowalcyzk’s vision for Staccato AI is to develop into an AI music co-writer that is used worldwide for music production, “We want to develop a software that knows who you are as an artist, your genre, your level of experience and all of the other information so that you can create the best piece of music while having full creative control over it.”
Building on this visionary inspiration requires cutting-edge technology and Staccato AI’s innovative software design achieves what it takes to transform the music production landscape. Using Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI), a protocol that helps computers, external hardware, and any additional music software to communicate effectively with each other, in his everyday life, Lupker decided to leverage this musical language and Artificial Intelligence to help him suggest and draw ideas to create the perfect piece of music. The best part? “Since MIDI is representations of music, and not published music, we had lot less copyright issues with Staccato,” shares Lupker. That’s not all – the Staccato team knew that since they are in the creative industries, their software, landing pages, website must look trendy and cool to spark creativity and inspiration in the ones using their platform. A strong believer in making AI as minimalistic as possible to help users have the most accurate result in their first prompt, Staccato’s platform does not ask its users for a lot of details unlike other platforms. “We don’t ask for genre, beats per minute and all other details. We give you a text box and ask you to tell us what you want. There is no prompting with the music as our AI system is smart enough to look at the music and figure out the style, genre, key, and the other aspects of your piece,” shares Lupker.
Already gaining significant traction, and striking gold with a recent partnership with Adobe Express to offer the Staccato AI platform as an ‘add-on’ to 50 million users worldwide, Staccato AI is well on their path to create ripples in the global music industry. “The future of music might see some changes in the way music is published and controlled. Platforms such as Staccato have the power of giving full creative liberty to the artists and creators in terms of the way they want their music to sound and how they want to publish it. People and creators want to listen and craft new and unique music, boundless of any restrictions,” says Lupker.
As Canada keeps climbing the ranks in the global music scene, innovations like Staccato AI give artists and creators powerful tools that not only change how music is made but transforms how we experience and enjoy it. A perfect blend of creativity and tech, this platform is leading the way to a new era where global talent will shine in the ever-evolving music industry.
To know more about Staccato AI, visit their website here.