# Aiode

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/aiode/ · added 2026-11-12 · updated 2026-11-12

**In short.** Aiode (AI music studio with licensed musician models that play along with the user's own track, Israel): Acquired by BandLab Technologies, July 2026. Evidence grade E: no revenue figure was checked. Team: 2 co-founders in 2022; 12 employees at the sale in July 2026 (Calcalist). Launched July 2025; sold 12 months after launch.

AI music studio with licensed musician models that play along with the user's own track · Israel · AI-native · started small, grew after funding · sold · group: Voice and audio

- Outcome: Acquired by BandLab Technologies, July 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: E; no revenue figure)
- Launch: July 2025; months from launch to the outcome: 12
- Team: 2 co-founders in 2022; 12 employees at the sale in July 2026 (Calcalist)
- Outside funding: About US$7 million in total, as Calcalist reported, including a US$5.5 million seed extension
- Main factor: Product
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 1, copyable pattern 1, capital needed 3
- Tags: AI-native, Small team, Funded, Exit, B2C, Music

Links:

- Visit aiode.com: https://aiode.com/

**The product.** A browser and desktop music studio. The user uploads a song or starts an empty project. The user picks a virtual musician, such as a bass player or a drummer, and the model plays a new part that fits the audio. Each musician model is trained on recordings that the musician licensed.

**Why it worked.** Aiode sold a model of how a named session musician plays, not a text-to-song generator. Its pages say that the musician receives a share and that all training audio is licensed. In July 2026 BandLab Technologies, a music software group, announced that it had acquired the company.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; E = no revenue figure found, so the headline is a non-money fact and the other facts carry their own grades; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

Aiode is a music studio built on audio-to-audio models, models that take recorded sound as input and return new recorded sound. The user uploads a track. A musician model listens to it and plays a matching part, for example a bass line or a drum pattern. The user directs each section and exports stems, separate audio files for each instrument, into a DAW, a digital audio workstation such as Ableton Live.

Two cousins, Idan Dobrecki (CEO) and Blue Dobrecky (COO), founded the company in 2022, according to Aiode's own post of August 2025. It left closed beta for an open beta on 1 July 2025 and announced a US$5.5 million seed extension on 29 September 2025. On 15 July 2026 BandLab Technologies announced the purchase. Calcalist wrote that Aiode had 12 employees and had raised about US$7 million.

No revenue figure, customer count or sale price is public, so this story has grade E. Calcalist estimated the price at "tens of millions of dollars"; neither company disclosed it. Aiode published a price list in March 2026, before the sale, and says that customers pay. No independent source confirms the paying customers.

## Why did Aiode work?

### The model answers the user's own audio instead of writing a song

Aiode says it offers "audio-to-audio models" and contrasts them with "text-to-song AI generators". The user uploads a track, and the model plays a part that is in key and in time with it.

### Each musician model shares revenue with the musician behind it

Aiode's FAQ says that every token used in a paid subscription on a musician model "is split with the musicians behind it". The CEO said in 2024 that the musician receives a share of the income each time someone creates music with the virtual version.

### The buyer keeps Aiode as a separate product with its founders

BandLab Technologies owns BandLab, Cakewalk, ReverbNation and Airbit. Music Business Worldwide reported that Aiode continues as a standalone product. Its musician partnerships and licensing agreements stay in place, and the co-founders keep leading it.

## How it was built

These points come from Aiode's own pages and press coverage. No source describes the model architecture in detail.

- The company calls its models "proprietary audio-to-audio models". Each musician model is trained on recordings made with a professional session musician, "under their direction".
- Aiode says it uses "narrow, supervised machine learning and siloed use of training data", so one artist's recordings are not mixed into another artist's model.
- The studio runs in the browser and, since 29 September 2025, as a desktop app that connects to DAWs. Export is 24-bit stereo WAV at 48 kHz.
- Use is metered in Muse Tokens. A March 2026 update says one token is about one minute of generated music.
- In February 2026 Aiode announced that its Layers models, groups of musicians for one production need, are based on LANDR's Fair Trade Data Program.

Sources: [2, 1, 10, 4, 18]

## Who tried this before Aiode, and why did they fail?

Three companies in our database of failed startups tried to build music services and failed. Each record names music rights or licensing costs among the causes. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from our database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### Jamglue (2006 to 2009; funding US$200K; cause: Legal and competition)

- Promise: An online remix community where non-professionals could mash up and share music in the browser.
- Why it died: Audio processing in a browser was weak, permissions for user remixes were costly, MySpace and SoundCloud took users, and no revenue model covered the costs.
- Record: 

### Rdio (2010 to 2015; funding US$125M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: A music streaming service with a design-led interface and playlists shared among friends.
- Why it died: Spotify spent more on users and partnerships, Rdio's pricing was hard to justify against free tiers, and licensing and operating costs burned cash.
- Record: 

### Crowdmix (2014 to 2016; funding shown as US$18 on the record page, unit unclear; cause: Product failed)

- Promise: A music streaming and social app where fans, musicians and DJs would talk and share while listening.
- Why it died: It underestimated music licensing across countries, spent on marketing before it had a product, and lacked technical leadership.
- Record: 

## What changed

Jamglue, Rdio and Crowdmix each ran into the cost of music rights: licences for user remixes, for streaming catalogues or for several countries. Aiode's pages describe a different route. The company records musicians, licenses the recordings, and pays the musicians a share of what customers spend.

Whether that route earns money is not shown. No revenue figure is public, and the price of the sale is only an estimate by Calcalist. What the record shows is that a music software group bought, in July 2026, a company founded in 2022.

## Can one person copy Aiode now?

**Verdict: The licensing method can be copied. The result is unknown.**

Aiode shows one way to sell an AI model of human skill: license the skill from named people, pay them a share, and say so. No source says how much customers paid or what the buyer paid, so a reader cannot judge the return.

1. Pick a skill that people sell one by one, such as playing one instrument in a certain style.
2. Record the skilled people under a licence that says how the recordings may be used.
3. Let the customer's own material be the input, so the model adds to the customer's work.
4. State the revenue share in public, and keep each person's data apart from the others.

**What is still open.** Other crafts that are sold by the hour and can be recorded. Examples are studio mixing, illustration styles, translation by subject and drafting for one legal field.

## How much did Aiode make, and what was it sold for? The numbers, graded

A two-founder music AI company from Israel, sold to BandLab Technologies in July 2026. The price, the revenue and the number of paying customers are not public

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Status, July 2026 | acquired by BandLab Technologies | B | Music Business Worldwide, 15 July 2026: "BandLab Technologies has acquired Aiode". Digital Music News and Calcalist report the same deal. Aiode stays a separate product. | [13, 14, 15] |
| Sale price | not disclosed; estimated at tens of millions of dollars | D | Music Business Worldwide: "BandLab Technologies did not disclose the financial terms". Calcalist, 16 July 2026: the value "is estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars". It gives no basis for the estimate. | [13, 14] |
| Founders and start | cousins Idan Dobrecki and Blue Dobrecky; founded in 2022 | C | Aiode's post of 11 August 2025: "Founded in 2022 by cousins Idan Dobrecki (CEO) and Blue Dobrecky". Tech Funding News spells the second surname "Dobrecki". | [8, 12] |
| Earlier name or product | none found | C | An Internet Archive copy of 8 December 2022 shows a page named Aiode with a form to "get early access". The company's own terms, archived in June 2025, name Aiode Ltd., an Israeli corporation. No earlier name appears. | [17, 6] |
| Team at the sale | 12 employees | B | Calcalist, 16 July 2026: "Founded in 2022, Aiode employs 12 people". No source gives the team size of the first year. | [13] |
| Funding | about US$7 million, including a US$5.5 million seed extension | B | Calcalist reported about US$7 million in total from Horizon Capital, Atooro, Regah Ventures and Mindset Music Ventures. Aiode's press release of 29 September 2025 announced the US$5.5 million extension led by Horizon Capital. | [13, 11] |
| Product launch | open beta 1 July 2025; desktop app 29 September 2025 | C | Aiode's posts: "leaving the Closed Beta phase and moving to Open Beta 2.0" on 1 July 2025, and the release of the desktop app on 29 September 2025. The 2024 conference demo already used the musician library. | [9, 10, 16] |
| Terms on fees, archived June 2025 | free of charge at that date | C | Aiode's terms in an Internet Archive copy of 5 June 2025: "The Service is currently provided free of charge to Users". That copy says "Last updated: October 2024". The company then reserved the right to introduce fees. | [6] |
| Price list before the sale | Free, Basic US$15, Pro US$20 a month; Enterprise on request | C | Aiode's own update of 24 March 2026 describes a token-based pricing model with four plans. It calls Basic "only for 15$ per month" and Pro "only 20$ per month". An Internet Archive copy of the home page of 1 February 2026 shows a discount offer by Aiode for both paid plans. | [4, 20] |
| Prices on 11 November 2026 | Basic US$9.99, Pro US$19.99 a month | C | Pricing page, read after the sale. An Internet Archive copy of 18 August 2026 shows the same prices. No copy of the pricing page from before the sale exists. | [3] |
| Paying customers | none named, no count | C | The product page says "Aiode offers two paid plans" and the FAQ speaks of "a paid subscription". An archived product page of 3 November 2025 says "We've also introduced paid plans". No source names a paying customer or gives a number. | [2, 3, 21] |
| Time from open beta to the sale | 12 months | calc | Calculated: July 2025 to July 2026. | [9, 14] |

How to read this table: a grade B value is press that retells the buyer's announcement or reports its own interview. A grade C value is a statement on Aiode's own pages. A grade D value is a journalist's estimate. A "calc" value was computed on this page. No revenue amount exists in the sources.

## Pricing

Aiode prices on 11 November 2026, from its pricing page (grade C); read after the sale

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 0 | 0 | 10 Muse Tokens a month, 2 musician tracks, 2 exports a month, no commercial licence |
| Basic |  | 9.99 | 100 Muse Tokens a month, 4 musician tracks, stem export, commercial use; list price US$15 |
| Pro |  | 19.99 | 300 Muse Tokens a month, up to 8 musician tracks, commercial use; list price US$30 |
| Enterprise |  |  | Pricing varies; labels, groups and schools contact the company |

The page shows a struck-through list price and a lower price: US$15 and US$9.99 for Basic, US$30 and US$19.99 for Pro. A toggle offers "Annually Extra 16% Off", but the annual price loads by script and was not read, so that column is empty. Aiode's own update of 24 March 2026, before the sale, listed Basic at US$15 and Pro at US$20. It gave 150 and 500 Muse Tokens a month, so prices and token counts have changed. Today the page and the terms name BandLab Singapore as the service owner.

## When did Aiode launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From a waiting-list page in 2022 to a sale to BandLab Technologies in July 2026. Each entry carries its grade.

- **2022** (grade C [8, 17]): Founded by two cousins. An archived page from 8 December 2022 carries the name Aiode and a waiting list.
- **29 September 2024** (grade B [16]): The CEO shows the technology at a Calcalist conference with an Israeli singer-songwriter as guest. They direct the virtual version of a guitarist that was already in the library. The CEO says the modelled musician receives a share of the income.
- **1 July 2025** (grade C [9]): Aiode leaves closed beta and moves to Open Beta 2.0.
- **29 September 2025** (grade C [10, 11]): Aiode announces the desktop app and a US$5.5 million seed extension led by Horizon Capital.
- **24 March 2026** (grade C [4]): An update on Aiode's site lists four plans. Free costs nothing, Basic US$15 a month, Pro US$20 a month, and Enterprise is on request.
- **15 July 2026** (grade B [14, 15, 13]): BandLab Technologies announces that it acquired Aiode. Terms are not disclosed. The two co-founders stay as CEO and COO.

## What could go wrong for Aiode?

- **What is not verified.** No revenue figure, customer count or sale price was found. We looked for a payment-processor profile (TrustMRR answered with an error; Latka has no page), a founder interview with figures, and press with a price. Billboard answered 402 and Rekkerd's robots.txt forbids the page. Calcalist's "tens of millions of dollars" is an estimate without a stated basis. The price list is Aiode's own, and the statement that customers pay is Aiode's own. The terms archived in June 2025 said the service was free. No copy of the pricing page from before the sale exists. An archived home page of 1 February 2026 shows Aiode's own discount offer for the Basic and Pro plans. No independent source confirms that these customers pay.
- **Musician models copy a playing style, and Sample Remaker rebuilds existing sounds.** Aiode says each musician model is licensed by the musician; it says less about the samples that users rebuild. Terms describe "replicating the behavior of real musicians". The FAQ says each model captures "the musician's audio and their performance behavior on their chosen instruments" under their direction. The product page lists players of trumpet, bass, guitar, piano, drums, beats and synth bass. Neither Aiode's pages nor the press describe a singing voice or a face model. The terms forbid users to impersonate any person. A reader may still judge a model of a living person's playing to be a likeness. A separate feature, Sample Remaker, "rebuilds any existing sample or recorded sound" to fit the user's track. Aiode's pages do not say who must own the rights to that sample. The copyright policy asks users to respect the rights of others.
- **Trust signals on the pricing page are not sourced.** The pricing page shows "Excellent!" with a Trustpilot logo, but no score, count or link. It shows an "As seen on" row with six outlet logos and a "Proudly Supported by" mark for Abbey Road REDD. It carries seven testimonials, each with a name, a photo and a job title. The about page carries three, and one of them repeats a pricing-page testimonial under the same name. Another is by a person the page itself labels "Aiode advisor". We found no repeat of any quotation under another name on Aiode's pages, and could not search other sites.
- **The pages now belong to the buyer.** The terms and the privacy policy now name BandLab Singapore as owner and data controller, and the privacy policy still names "Aiode Ltd." in one place. The terms carry the date "October 2025" and the copyright policy "October 2024", although they name the buyer. Dates of the legal pages are not a reliable guide to when they changed.

## Sources

1. Aiode home page — https://aiode.com/ (grade C). Read in full on 11 November 2026. Source for the five-step workflow and the statements on licensed models and musician participation.
2. Aiode product page and FAQ — https://aiode.com/product (grade C). Read in full on 11 November 2026. Source for the model types, the musician list, the revenue split and the export format.
3. Aiode pricing page, read live on 11 November 2026 and in an Internet Archive copy of 18 August 2026 — https://aiode.com/pricing (grade C). Read in full. The live page and the archived copy show the same plans and prices; both are after the sale.
4. Aiode, 24 March 2026: Aiode March 26 product update — https://aiode.com/aiode-update (grade C). Read in full. A guide on Aiode's own site; source for the price list before the sale and for the token definition.
5. Aiode terms of service, live copy read on 11 November 2026 — https://aiode.com/terms-of-service (grade C). Read in full. Names BandLab Singapore as the owner; source for "replicating the behavior of real musicians", the ban on impersonation and the fee terms.
6. Aiode terms of service, Internet Archive copy of 5 June 2025 — https://web.archive.org/web/20250605191636/https://aiode.com/terms-of-service/ (grade C). Read in full. Names Aiode Ltd. as the owner and says the service was free of charge.
7. Aiode about page — https://aiode.com/about (grade C). Read in full on 11 November 2026. Source for the three named testimonials and the statement on how musician models are made.
8. Aiode, 11 August 2025: Aiode Recognized in TheMarker's 2025 Innovative Startups List — https://aiode.com/aiode-recognized-in-themarkers-2025-innovative-startups-list (grade C). Read in full. Aiode's own post; source for the founding year and the names of the two cousins.
9. Aiode, 1 July 2025: Aiode Beta 2.0 is Here — https://aiode.com/aiode-beta-2-is-here (grade C). Read in full. Source for the move from closed to open beta.
10. Aiode, 29 September 2025: Aiode Launches Desktop App — https://aiode.com/aiode-launches-desktop-app (grade C). Read in full. Source for the desktop app and its DAW connection.
11. The AI Insider, 29 September 2025: Aiode Secures $5.5 Million Seed Extension to Launch Ethical AI Music Platform — https://theaiinsider.tech/2025/09/29/aiode-secures-5-5-million-seed-extension-to-launch-ethical-ai-music-platform/ (grade C). Read in full. A press release by Aiode that the site carries; source for the seed extension and the investors it names.
12. Tech Funding News, 29 September 2025: Exclusive: Aiode grabs $5.5M to power ethical AI music platform — https://techfundingnews.com/aiode-ethical-ai-music-platform-raises-5-5m/ (grade B). Read in full. Source for the cousins as founders in 2022 and the consent-based training.
13. Calcalist (Ctech), 16 July 2026: BandLab acquires Israeli AI music startup Aiode in deal estimated at tens of millions — https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/ryahrolnge (grade B). Read in full. Source for the team of 12, the US$7 million in funding, the investors and the price estimate.
14. Music Business Worldwide, 15 July 2026: BandLab Technologies buys Aiode, an AI music studio built on 'fully-licensed' audio — https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/bandlab-acquires-aiode-an-ai-music-studio-built-on-fully-licensed-audio/ (grade B). Read in full. Retells the buyer's announcement; source for the date, the undisclosed terms and the standalone product.
15. Digital Music News, 15 July 2026: BandLab Acquires Fully Licensed AI-Powered Music Studio Aiode — https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2026/07/15/bandlab-acquires-aiode/ (grade B). Read in full. Retells the same announcement; quotes the co-founders and the buyer's adviser.
16. Calcalist (Ctech), 29 September 2024: Our technology allows an 18-year-old musician in Tel Aviv to work with the likes of Jimi Hendrix — https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/up9f4xtaq (grade B). Read in full. Report of the CEO's live demonstration; source for the revenue share to musicians.
17. Aiode home page, Internet Archive copy of 8 December 2022 — https://web.archive.org/web/20221208155728/https://www.aiode.com/ (grade C). Read in full. A waiting-list page named Aiode; shows no earlier name.
18. Aiode and LANDR announce a strategic partnership, 22 February 2026 — https://aiode.com/aiode-and-landr-announce-a-strategic-partnership (grade C). Read in full. Source for the Layers models and LANDR's data programme.
19. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Record pages read on the website on 11 November 2026. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.
20. Aiode home page, Internet Archive copy of 1 February 2026 — https://web.archive.org/web/20260201223424/https://aiode.com/ (grade C). Read in full. Shows a discount offer for the Basic and Pro plans, five months before the sale.
21. Aiode product page, Internet Archive copy of 3 November 2025 — https://web.archive.org/web/20251103035409/https://aiode.com/product/ (grade C). Read the FAQ section. It says that paid plans were introduced with Beta 2.0.

Contact: aiolum@livyden.com. Run Aiode? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com (subject: Correction: Aiode).