UK-based LifeScore has raised £11 million and wants to ‘soundtrack your life’

The UK-based startup LifeScore has raised £11 million in a Series A funding round led by Octopus Ventures. The funding will be used to further develop the company’s proprietary adaptive music technology as it aims to expand its customer base in Europe, the U.S., and Asia. This new investment brings LifeScore’s total funding to £12 million.

If you’ve played a video game within the past 30 odd years, chances are, you’ve already been exposed to adaptive music; a soundtrack that changes based on environment and situational variables. Borrowing cues from this format, LifeScore is taking things one step further and moving that soundtrack out of the game and into real life.

If those Metaverse bells are ringing right now, you’re on the right track.

While we might not give much thought to the ‘background’ music applied to our daily lives, a quick search on just about any popular music service reveals page after page of soundtracks designed to help you focus, sleep, get more out of your workout, chill, etc.

But instead of having to seek out these soundtracks, soundtracks that might not even be what we need and when we need it, LifeScore wants to deliver them in real-time based on user context. 

And these aren’t just any old soundtracks the platform is capable of producing.

LifeScore’s patented Cellular Composition platform uses AI to transform ‘cells’ pre-recorded at Abbey Road Studios by top-notch musicians on some of the world’s finest instruments using ambisonic microphones, to layer, sequence, mix, and deliver the final output.

Noting that the technology has a wide range of applications across AR and other simulated environments including, live streaming, gaming, automotive, sleep, fitness, health, and wellness, LifeScore's technology has already been incorporated into a Bentley demonstration vehicle and recently signed deal with Audi.

LifeScore's founding team is comprised of film and video game composer Philip Sheppard, Siri Inc. co-founder Tom Gruber, former ARM executive Ian Drew, and former Senior Associate at legal powerhouse Latham & Watkins, Chris Walch.

The company stresses, “It is not a replacement for human-created music. On the contrary, it is a new way for human-composed and performed music to be algorithmically produced on demand.”

A 2019 graduate of the Abbey Road RED incubator programme, LifeScore’s £11 million Series A investment round was led by Octopus Ventures and saw participation from Warner Music Group, IDEO, 4 Good Ventures, and existing investor, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn's Metaplanet Holdings.

“LifeScore is creating music for the Metaverse, and is building the future of creative collaboration bridging man and machine," commented IDEO's founding partner Tara Tan.