Pro Sound Effects (PSE) has been the entertainment industry’s go-to source for high-quality sounds for decades, serving every major name in TV, film, and gaming. Now, the company is teaming up with Musical AI, the AI rights management platform, to support ethical licensing of sound effects in AI development.
Pro Sound Effects is the world’s largest library of professionally recorded sound, home to more than 1.2 million sounds across hundreds of categories, recorded by top teams and used by tens of millions of creative professionals—and growing. The variety and quality have made PSE a pillar of sound design and audio/video creation, with 34% of everything we watch, play, or listen to involving some of PSE’s sounds.
PSE’s highly desirable catalog contributes to Musical AI’s mission to make AI training fair for rightsholders. Musical AI will allow PSE to offer select sounds for training purposes, while PSE retains full control over how its data is licensed and used. These licensed sounds will be included in datasets that generative AI companies such as Beatoven are already using to train generative models on the secure Musical AI platform. Musical AI will then use its proprietary approach to trace usage of licensed sounds in generative outputs and report usage to PSE and its AI customers, to guarantee fair compensation and legal compliance.
“PSE’s catalog, with its sonic diversity and excellent metadata, is widely known as the go-to sound effects company in the business, making it a huge win for AI companies looking for good training data,” explains Musical AI CEO Sean Power. “By working together, we’re opening more doors for participation in generative AI while respecting and growing the value of the library PSE has built over the past 20 years. The result will be better sounding AI built on a model that benefits rights holders.”
“AI would not exist without human creativity, so creators must be elevated and compensated accordingly,” says Douglas Price, Founder and CEO of Pro Sound Effects. “This partnership with Musical AI is about setting the bar for what must be standard—a model where sound effects are valued as essential creative tools, fairly licensed, and set up to fuel the future of AI audio innovation.”
About Musical AI
Musical AI (wearemusical.ai) is providing the first real attribution model for generative AI in music. As ardent life-long supporters of the music industry, the Musical AI team saw the AI music ecosystem spiraling into unethical practices. So, they fixed it. Musical Al has created an Al Training license management and attribution platform to uplift musicians, respect rightsholders, and unlock creativity for music makers and tech innovators alike.
About Pro Sound Effects
Since 2004, Pro Sound Effects (PSE) has developed the world’s largest library of professionally recorded sounds through exclusive collaborations with award-winning artists and acclaimed recordists. Creators and companies worldwide rely on PSE’s flexible platform, robust human-created metadata, and custom licensing options to deliver exceptional sound and power audio innovation. Learn more at prosoundeffects.com.
