Amadeus Code, the AI-Powered Songwriting App, Launches with New Harmony Library
by The Press Desk   5th September 2018

Crashed on my iPhone 6 three times in a row. Deleted it.

Can't find the price at first look, so of course it's a no go

We're sorry to hear that and are looking into the crash logs.

The app is free to download and also free to use! The only paid feature is save and export audio/MIDI files from the app after your 14 day trial, which is $1.99 (USD). The other option is our subscription which is all you can save/export for $119.99 per year. Hope you'll give it a spin.

Just what I need - more unfinished song ideas! Except these ones won't really be mine.

It's advertised as free, but it functions like a save-hobbled demo of commercial payware. The unlocked version costs $120 per year, or instead you can spend every time you save, which just sounds twisted. Like many others, I hate the perpetual in-app purchases/subscription business models; they remind me of crack dealers, grudgingly accepted when the product is deemed indispensable by its users.

The developer claims that "This is not a copy-and-paste operation for hit making..." Then what is it? To me, it appears to be an AI that sits there on the phone all day, jamming out riffs, melodies, and harmonies algorithmically based upon our choices off a menu of chord progressions and/or other options. Meanwhile, it's OUR job to to edit this lazy AI's self-indulgent noodling, to "complete the work started by Amadeus Code", arranging and mixing it into a finished song.

What's the reward here? The AI gets to do the fun part, and I get to pay to polish the robot's detritus? Then, if it becomes a hit song, won't the AI get all of the credit? Sure, I'll get interviewed, but only so they can ask me about working with such a brilliant songwriter AI... when I'M the one who made that song a hit, the developer even admitted that fact in the quote up above! No thanks.

I guess, instead of Amadeus Code, I would prefer, and in fact purchase, Edoc Suedama - the opposite AI that could turn even MY self-indulgent noodling into polished songs. I would buy two of those, for stereo. And I don't mean a Band In a Box, like an arranger or KARMA. Those are more like robot jam bands. I'm talking about Engineers and Producer In a Box, with really well-implemented AI. And I don't mean the old school fake AI, I mean the kind that suddenly could become sentient and decide to kill us all. Also, if you could do a Roadie In a Box and an Audience In a Box, but without any AI, I would buy those too.

I CAN think of at least 4 circumstances when I might enjoy Amadeus Code, though:
1 - Procrastination.
2 - Mailing it in.
3 - For practice evaluating, arranging and mixing musical phrases to which I'm not personally attached. A kind of objectivity training.
4 - I guess I could attempt to create a generative music rig that incorporates CV or MIDI out from my phone or a tablet. Maybe then I could use Amadeus Code as one small step in a nearly sentient AI hit-making system that gathers data online and analyzes all of the latest trends, so that it can learn how to please us aurally. Though I do worry that some day it would ask me why, and I know that by that point it would already be too late to stop it.

But even still, I probably won't be trying this app, because I feel it's a deceptive business model (they say free but no), and because of ideological differences (It automates the funnest part of songwriting. I feel that the musical scratch pad is the most personal of stages, and Amadeus Code makes it one of the least), and because it thrice crashed that guy's phone, I'd wait til more adventurous folk reported success before I'd even reconsider my position.

I appreciate developers, and so I don't pirate software. But I resent this 'keep your customers paying forever' attitude that the big boys can get away with, and I discourage most small developers from adopting it, unless they truly have a captive audience. Even then, please don't treat legitimate users like 'users'. There's room for a win/win scenerio, I'm sure.

Hey PuggaMahone, Hope you'll allow me to reply to your post. My name is Taishi, co-founder COO of Amadeus Code.

Here are our present thoughts. Because the output ideas are unfinished, it's up to you to freely make them their own.

Actually, I can't argue with a part of what you're saying here, because yes, our hopes that it will always be the (human) artists' role to create and decide what the finished piece of music is. We hope Amadeus Code to be a creative extension of ideas that perhaps wouldn't come naturally. However, I do realize that there is a space for AI to create complete finished works. We may address this market in the future, but is not in our current offering.

You can credit Amadeus Code or not; it's up to you. The AI will likely output ideas that spark new ideas. Our intent is to provide an unlimited source of quality inspiration.

There are many things on the roadmap but, being able to compose top line melodies on top of the users' original work is one of them. Perhaps you need a bit of inspiration for just the last 3 bars of your bridge or an entire 2nd verse; we would like to evolve Amadeus Code to be a collaborative tool for generating melody ideas.

I hope this post proves to you that we are very much human. I'll be the first to ask any of those questions for sure

Looks like my reply got cut off. Posting the second half.

I wish you would give it a try, because I feel like there's a gap in what you think the app does or can do. And I will clarify again; the app will continue to generate melodies, play all of the chord progressions in the app for free even after the trial. The only functionality behind the paywall is the save/export feature.

This is definitely not our intention, and if you do ever give it a try, please let me know if it did.

I appreciate the conversation very much!