IE University launches LyrAIcs, the first music recommender with AI Spanish-language song search

LyrAIcs, an ERC project funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 program, is a Spanish-language music content recommender based on the automated analysis of song lyrics. Set to disrupt streaming services, LyrAIcs analyzes song lyrics semantically using artificial intelligence to significantly improve playlist recommendation and user possibilities.

The project, developed at the Center for the Governance of Change at IE University, is led by Elena González-Blanco, Co-Founder and CEO of Clidrive and Clibrain, and Salvador Ros, Director of the Laboratory for Innovation in Digital Humanities at UNED, accompanied by a research team made up of national and international specialists in natural language processing, artificial intelligence and poetry. The team has trained a system of algorithms for more than 200 hours, creating six language models specifically designed to understand and analyze Spanish-language lyrics.

Until now, music recommenders have been based on music genres, melodies or users' own preferences, without taking into account the content of songs. LyrAIcs is a breakthrough in that it can detect semantic similarities between songs to provide more accurate recommendations. It also provides third parties with an API to exploit its algorithms and language models, as well as a sandbox for users to explore the technology, mixing songs from different eras, genres and periods.

“Spanish is the second-most listened to language in music, but there is hardly any specific technology to analyze it, and existing artificial intelligence algorithms are not sufficiently trained to understand Spanish.”
Elena González-Blanco

The new AI paradigms with LLMs (large language models) that have emerged in recent months have allowed LyrAIcs to maximize its results.

All the application's functionalities are now available at lyraics.com.

About LyrAIcs

LyrAIcs is a research project developed at IE University’s Center for the Governance of Change, building on the Postdata project. Postdata, which started six years ago, focused on the analysis of poetry using natural language processing and artificial intelligence to automate the stanzas and lines of poems, with a special focus on Spanish. The project’s results went beyond initial expectations, receiving additional funding from the European Commission to take it to market, which gave birth to LyrAIcs.

About Elena González-Blanco

Elena González-Blanco is Co-Founder and CEO of Clidrive. She was Global Head of Digital for Wealth Management and Insurance at Banco Santander (EVP), and before that General Manager Europe at insurtech startup Coverwallet, acquired by AON in January 2020. Previously, she was the Head of Product Development in Artificial Intelligence at Minsait-Indra. An expert in artificial intelligence and digital transformation, she is a specialist in the field of language technology.

About IE University's Center for the Governance of Change

The Center for the Governance of Change (CGC) is an educational and applied research center based at IE University that studies the economic and social policy implications of the ongoing technological revolution and proposes solutions to address its unintended effects. The CGC produces pioneering impact-oriented research linking projects that bring together disciplines and methodologies to unveil the complexity of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain or automation and explore their potential threats and contributions to society. In addition, the CGC develops executive training on technological and social disruption for public institutions and companies interested in broadening their understanding of global trends and a series of outreach activities aimed at improving understanding about the changes ahead. All with a single goal: to contribute to building a more prosperous and sustainable society for all.