Designers have Figma and businesses have Microsoft Teams, now the music and audio industry have Muse Sessions, a new Zoom-like platform for musicians. Muse is designed to allow creators to connect and make music together online in real-time. Users in 174 countries have already clocked more than 25 million minutes in sessions. Muse is desined to provide a more accessible industry where global creators can collaborate from anywhere.
“On the surface, the Muse app looks similar to popular video call platforms, but it has opened the door to an entirely new way of creating music online,” the announcement states. “Now, engineers can run remote mix sessions by streaming HQ audio and responding to feedback in real time. Producers can pull in musicians to remotely record instruments directly into their DAW. Built-in features like file sharing, screen sharing, and screen control eliminate the headaches from bouncing between multiple platforms and searching through email threads for the latest version of a recording.”
“Luis (Caballero, Muse CEO) and his team have created a technology that consistently delivers exceptional video and audio quality, enabling music creators to collaborate effortlessly with our musicians, as if they were in the same studio room,” says Xavier Jameson, Co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at Musiversal. “Together, we've raised the bar and set a new gold standard for remote recording.”
The Muse Audio Engine makes Muse compatible with all pro audio equipment, allowing users to connect their gear and choose multiple channels from devices. Users can stream lossless PCM 32-bit audio, designed to prioritize stability and faster audio streaming.
The new workflows introduced by Muse are being used by all types of musicians across the audio industry—ranging from young bedroom producers to Grammy Award-winning engineers, composers, and producers working with artists like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Kendrick Lamar. Enrico De Paoli, a Multi-Grammy Award-Winning Music Engineer (Ray Charles, Elton John), says Muse significantly improved his workflow, “Things that were once impossible have become possible, and tasks that were bureaucratic and tedious have become simple. In short, Muse has been a complete transformation!”
Born and raised in Oklahoma City, Muse co-founder and CEO Luis Caballero left his software engineering job in 2018 and split his time between making music and building meme pages to promote his music. As his meme pages grew, studio owner and future Muse co-founder Austin Dunn stumbled across Caballero's account and convinced him to move to LA to promote music with memes for record labels. While in LA, Caballero realized how difficult it was to make music with his friends back in Oklahoma. “The music collaboration tools in 2019 were unreliable, complicated, and fragmented. We had to patch together multiple apps to recreate the in-person studio experience, and even then, I still couldn't do fundamental things like record audio or MIDI. I knew there had to be a better way,” he says.
Caballero began conceptualizing his idea of Muse and brought it to Dunn who initially said it was “the dumbest idea he had ever heard”…until a global pandemic sent everyone home from studios for lockdown. The need for remote collaboration was more prevalent than ever, and while Zoom was great for regular conferencing, the more intimate and technical experience of creating music together demanded another solution.
Caballero reached out to his longtime friend and business partner, Sung Choi, who was serving in the Korean military at the time. Outside of boot camp, Choi worked with Caballero to build the first prototype of Muse. But Choi’s work didn’t stop there, as he went on to build an entire audio engine from scratch (the one used in Muse today) and serve as CTO of Muse.
Muse continues to grow their team and develop more features to reach their goal of connecting musicians across the world. “While the magic felt during in-person sessions are undeniably irreplaceable online, Muse acts as a tool in the industry to facilitate more efficient and accessible workflows. For example, A&Rs can now listen to a shared HQ audio stream while on a video conference, artists can watch their engineer tweak a session from their own bedroom, and songwriting camps can make space for musicians from different backgrounds and cultures around the world,” the announcement continues.
The founders of Muse say their core value is making music accessible, collaborative, and simple: “It can take a village to create great music, but fitting that village into one studio at one time isn’t always possible. On top of that, most people creating music today aren’t in the label ecosystem with access to resources and studio spaces,” explains Dunn. “We are proud to build an infrastructure designed specifically for artists that gives them the tech they need to thrive.”
WATCH: Akon and Amirror Live Vocal Production Session - with Muse App Remote Recording
