Research Engineer

Rights before code: GRAI partners with MassiveMusic on catalog infrastructure and licensed AI training data. The dual partnership equips GRAI's upcoming social streaming service with scalable catalogue delivery and enhanced metadata, alongside a separately licensed, opt-in dataset to train GRAI's own music model. WARSAW, Poland, Oct. 15, 2026/PRNewswire/ - GRAI, the AI music company, has partnered with MassiveMusic, part of Songtradr, which delivers music and data to digital platforms worldwide, on the music infrastructure behind its upcoming social streaming service and a dedicated dataset licensed for training its own music foundation model. Music has always been social: a Harvard-led study found song in every one of the 315 societies it examined, tied to the moments people share. Streaming solved access to music. Sharing it with the people around you is still catching up. GRAI is building a place for it, and sees the future of streaming as co-creative as well as social. Under the first agreement, MassiveMusic delivers commercial repertoire to GRAI through a single feed, providing a route to participating independent and distributor catalogs through MassiveMusic's established rightsholder agreements. Tracks arrive with permissions assigned as determined by the applicable rightsholder agreements, and approved titles are available on GRAI within minutes of MassiveMusic sending them. The feed is designed to scale to the catalog licensed for GRAI through MassiveMusic, and building on MassiveMusic's existing infrastructure supports a quicker path to launch. Rightsholders will be paid and receive usage reports for plays on GRAI under the applicable agreements. MassiveMusic also supplies enhanced metadata, describing tracks across more than 30 dimensions, from mood and energy to instrumentation, key, and era. GRAI uses this metadata for search and recommendations, so a new listener can find their next favorite song from the first session, before they have friends on GRAI to discover through. It is also designed to support discovery of both recent releases and familiar recordings. "In engineering, you don't want to build on shaky ground and hope to fix the architecture under pressure. For us, establishing 'rights before code' from day one was an operational necessity. When music moves between people, the rights have to move with it. Partnering with MassiveMusic gave us that foundation right out of the gate, letting us build with total clarity and focus on the product." - Dzmitry Kamarouski, CTO and co-founder of GRAI. A second agreement covers AI training: GRAI trains its model on a dedicated, opt-in dataset approved by rightsholders specifically for AI training through MassiveMusic's opt-in system. Built in-house, the model is designed to understand the building blocks of a song (melody, harmony, and rhythm) rather than just generate audio. The training license does not itself authorize downstream creative uses of recordings or compositions. "Innovation and compliance are key to GRAI. We supplied a music platform built to support their services as they scale, from a dataset licensed for ethical AI training to catalogue delivery enriched with our proprietary enhanced metadata," said James Priestley, SVP Global Sales, Licensing and Technology at MassiveMusic. "Our aim is to take care of the backend heavy lifting so the GRAI team can remain focused on what matters most: their audience's needs and the end experience." GRAI is also one of the first two companies to license the patents of Music IP Holdings, which cover technology for using recorded music with AI, from creation and authorization to distribution and payment. The company is building toward letting people put something of their own into the songs they love, with artists, songwriters, and other rightsholders asked and paid. In September, GRAI announced the acquisition of Hangout, the social music platform from the creators of Turntable.fm. Early builds of GRAI are now in testing on a test catalog from MassiveMusic ahead of its public launch, and the waitlist is open at grai.fm. About GRAI GRAI is building a social streaming service for music. It is a place for a younger generation, where music finally moves between people rather than plays for one. Behind it is GRAI's own music foundation model, trained on data licensed for that purpose and built to understand music, not just generate audio. GRAI was founded in 2025 by the team behind Vochi, the video-editing app acquired by Pinterest, and has raised seed funding co-led by Khosla Ventures and Inovo VC. About MassiveMusic MassiveMusic, part of the Songtradr brand portfolio, is the global music and sound partner for leading brands, agencies and platforms. By blending creativity, data-driven insights and market-leading technology, MassiveMusic delivers scalable music strategies, innovative technology services and award-winning creative solutions, driving measurable business value and shaping the future of sound. SOURCE GRAI Inc.

GRAI, an AI music company, has acquired Hangout, a social music platform created by the makers of Turntable.fm. The deal aims to build a service combining social listening with AI technology. Hangout demonstrated that people prefer discovering music through friends rather than algorithms. GRAI plans to scale this social experience using advanced technology whilst maintaining partnerships with labels, publishers and collecting societies. "The future of streaming is social and co-creative," said Andrei Avsievich, GRAI co-founder and president. Joseph Perla, Hangout's founder, said the platform was designed to recreate the collective experience of sharing music. GRAI secured licensing from Music IP Holdings in August, covering AI use of recorded music. The company, founded in 2025, raised seed funding co-led by Khosla Ventures and Inovo VC.