The main objective of this project is to improve BEATIK from an app with limited features directed to individual musicians, to a solution of app+platform with new and important functionalities that fully cover rehearsals and performances of classical music, as well as the distribution and score management needs of music organisations.
During this project, the BEATIK app has been improved with the following new features:
• iOS and Android porting. The app is now working also on Android platform from 7.0 version.
• Score catalog, including copyright free PDF’s. 124,460 works with more than 400,000 PDF’s scores are now stored in the BEATIK library, Smart scores from BEATIK catalog (over 2,000, that can be converted from: XML files, Lylipond files, from PDF+audio files) and Smart scores from publishers. We have made a commercial effort to reach agreements with some publishers to add their digitalized sheet music in our library.
• The Cloud Platform involves web access for user login/sign up and management, a front-end to include scores in BEATIK library and a robust search engine.
• Android and iOS users can now create annotation layers as well as displaying annotations of other users of their musucians group. BEATIK’s in-house Score Viewing Program is now developed for rendering the digital paper sheets on screen in the standard human-readable format. Using PDF music sheets allow us to increase drastically the number of available scores in our library.
• BEATIK includes the possibility of performing audio following. Our new technology is able to follow an interpretation and compare it with previous records of the same work.
Objectives listed on the proposal and our achievements:
• Technical achievements:
Flexible Database (orchestras, music shools and ensembles) for users, managing groups, interconnections and hierarchy and positions within groups. Web interface to allow bulk management of user groups/roles and distribution of scores.
Content Database to make scores available for download through the app (124,460 PDF works and 990 Smart Scores works). BEATIK library is also ready for including publisher digital scores and for importing user scores. BEATIK is now ready for training the score from user with just a PDF and an audio recording.
All Smart Scores are stored in encrypted .BTK format in order to assure data security.
Successful porting from iOS to Android, using High Performance Computing techniques and parallelism in order to use all the computing resources.
BEATIK app is now ready to provide an audio recording of the interpretation and convert different score formats (POF, Lilypond) into Smart Scores. We have implemented a process for parsing XML files and converting them into Smart scores (ready for automatic page turning).
Annotations on scores are displayed in Viewer and can be instantly included, removed and shared among the musical group in real-time. Sharing annotations is the optimum way to completely remove paper usage and avoid scores re-printing.
Synthesizer that reproduces the piece from the XML file at a chosen speed with metronome functionality.
• Commercial & financial activities:
27-Feb-2019: first BEATIK concert as kick-off of our crowdfunding campaign.
The composer Juan Antonio Simarro has tried BEATIK with a composition designed for allowing the pianists showing their own performing expression
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtOTPRs1acg(se abrirá en una nueva ventana).
15-Oct-2019: second BEATIK concert as kick-off of BEATIK Soloist.
The international violinist Leticia Moreno has tried out BEATIK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTOulJrSgsc(se abrirá en una nueva ventana).
7/14-Mar-2020: BEATIK festival (Altea, Alicante, Spain), including an orchestra concert (Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia), an ensemble concert (La Tempestad) and some chamber concerts with academy students and professors.
Our social network campaigns have been impressed 2,817,088 times, with over 4,000 Facebook followers, 132,000 Google searches and more than 21,000 open mails.
1-Jul-2019: First commercial version market launch: BEATIK Soloist. The business model of BEATIK soloist is a free installation and a 40 €/yr subscription to access the score following services.
1-Apr-2020: Second commercial version market launch: BEATIK Groups. The business model of BEATIK groups is a free installation and a paid subscription to access to the web interface management for groups and the score following services. The initial subscription price is 500 €/yr (ensemble), 5,000 €/yr (music school) and 12,000 €/yr (orchestra).
For all cases, the access to copyrighted sheet music from publishers is under payment.
BEATIK has been installed 1,640 times from the AppStore and 475 times from Google Play.