Sound Advice: Imogen Heap

Join Imogen Heap, founder of Auracles, and Eliah Seton, CEO of SoundCloud, for a special installment of Sound Advice, the weekly interview series covering artists’ journeys and their creative process. In this episode, which was recorded live at Web Summit 2025 in Lisbon, we discuss the use of ethical AI in the music industry, Imogen’s Auracles platform, the future of creative ownership and more.

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Welcome to Sound Advice, the series spotlighting artists’ creative process and their SoundCloud journey. We’ll get the inside knowledge straight from the source on how musicians, producers and creatives are leaning into everything SoundCloud offers to elevate their sound, get heard and catapult their careers. Sound Advice is now available in audio format on the SoundCloud Stories profile.

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Normally, Vivian Host (also known as DJ/producer Star Eyes) is on Sound Advice every week, talking to artists from around the globe about their creative process. For this installment of Sound Advice, we’re doing something a bit different. We’re broadcasting an exclusive conversation between Imogen Heap, founder of Auracles, and Eliah Seton, CEO of SoundCloud, who recently sat down at Web Summit 2025, in Lisbon, Portugal, to talk about innovative uses of technology in the music industry, and the future of the artist-fan experience.

From the Web Summit stage, Eliah went over some new SoundCloud innovations, aimed at increasing DIY artist revenues and growing their fanbases, while Imogen explained the genesis of her groundbreaking projects like “The Song That Never Was,” ai.mogen and her latest venture, Auracles, which is a digital ID that allows artists to retain visibility and control of their creative IP. As the Grammy Award-winning artist and technologist explained, this enables better collaboration, intellectual property tracking and the ability to assign permissions for more ethical AI use.

In addition to bringing the full recording of this live conversation to everyone as part of our Sound Advice series, we’re proud to announce a new partnership between Auracles and SoundCloud. Building on the themes that Imogen and Eliah explored during their session at Web Summit 2025, we’re excited to announce Auracles has now officially joined the SoundCloud Benefits Partner Program, expanding access for creators to better organize and protect their data. For artists navigating a fast-evolving music ecosystem — especially one in an increasingly opaque digital world — this integration offers new clarity, protection, and creative autonomy. Learn more about Auracles and get started here.

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LISTEN TO THE AUDIO EPISODE OF SOUND ADVICE FEATURING IMOGEN HEAP

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LISTEN TO ‘I AM___’ BY IMOGEN HEAP ON SOUNDCLOUD

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Things We Talked About In This Episode of Sound Advice

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How Imogen Heap’s Commitment to New Music Technologies Evolved Through SoundCloud

• Across her career, Imogen Heap has cultivated a fan base in different, innovative ways, including on SoundCloud. First joining SoundCloud in 2009, Imogen utilized the platform to directly connect with fans from the very beginning, from “The Song That Never Was” to her 2014 ‘Sparks’ album, which were both partially made with fan audio submissions, to her “Ask Imogen” profile button, which allowed fans to contact her and formed the basis of SoundCloud’s direct messaging feature. When it comes to how platforms today can deepen the artist-to-fan relationship, what seeds did these projects plant in her mind?
• For Imogen, these seeds have always been in her music technology work: strengthening interoperability between services, helping musicians do better behind the scenes for their careers, making money flow to them quicker and easier, and encouraging transparency between platforms and the artists that use them. 
• “At the core of all of these projects,” Imogen says, “is how to get what we need quicker and how to create flow better in our lives, so that we can get on with the good stuff,” which is making and sharing music. Here, she also talks more about her “Ask Imogen” button. This feature allowed fans to contact her directly on SoundCloud, before that close connection between artist and audience was commonplace online. 
• When it comes to the fan audio submissions, hundreds of “sound seeds” and remixes were submitted to Imogen — and the sheer volume of them got her thinking about the scope of her fanbase, how to connect with them in greater depth, and how the data about the audio they created could be better organized and credited. 
• From there, Imogen set out to work on platforms that could help her create a “home for me, as a creative identity space” where the data about her music could be better stored, tracked and utilized. It’s ultimately what led to the creation of Auracles, Imogen Heap’s platform which works with artists to better organize their music permissions, samples, data and more; a tool that allows artists to better navigate a new era of AI, copyright and music ownership.

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The Creation of Auracles, Imogen Heap’s Digital ID System For Artists

• Here, Imogen gets into the details about her Auracles platform and how it functions. Since her first visit to Web Summit as a speaker, in 2018, Imogen has been working on artist ID technologies to streamline their work life. Before Auracles, she worked on a Creative Passport system. 
• “Wouldn’t it be great if we had one true data source for all the music in the world, that we would contribute to as musicians, engineers, labels and publishers,” Imogen asks. “We would be able to have one content ID space instead of multiple, incomplete and inconsistent data sets across all of the platforms,” she continues, “and a source for updated biographical or contextual information around a song that could help discovery.” 
• Imogen gets into greater detail about how this works, and gives examples about how such a system could amplify works, connected projects and even assist with fundraising for artists and charitable causes. 
• Going forward, Imogen shares, this technology could be connected with platforms like SoundCloud, and allow listeners to connect with music based on not just past listening habits, but elements such as language, ethics and social causes. As she explains, “It’s about how to extend my person, beliefs and creative self way beyond just the music.”
• For CEO Eliah Seton, the concept and functionality of Auracles is “incredibly exciting” to SoundCloud, and particularly for how it speaks to music and social discovery. Expanding on this, Eliah discusses SoundCloud’s recent launch and revamp of social discovery features, shedding light on how Auracles could help amplify that discovery and how fans can feel better connected to their favorite artists’ listening experiences on SoundCloud. Going deeper, Eliah raises the topic of permissions: how platforms can become “a central repository for an artist’s permissions,” and streamline the business of sampling. 

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‍Imogen Heap on Leveraging AI Technology to Power Her Music Business Strategies, Connect With Fans and Evolve Her Artistry

• In 2024, Imogen launched ai.mogen, an AI-powered digital assistant that allows her to answer fan questions based on past online interactions. The technology gives Imogen’s fans real-time insights and feedback in ways that effectively mimic Imogen herself, forming a greater connective tissue with her audience while carving out more time in her day for creative work.
• Here, Imogen talks about the experiences that inspired her to make ai.mogen, how it came together as a piece of technology, and what the initial effects of it have been on her working life.
• Bringing it back to the use of Auracles and her other technology projects over the years, Imogen sees artists having their own platforms to interact with fans, as well as using platforms like SoundCloud, as a crucial part of contemporary life as a creator. 
• “I'm excited about how Auracles can help the artists and the services fill in all the gaps in a seamless flow,” she says. “SoundCloud is such an incredibly forward-thinking music space, and always has been. I’m excited because you’re always very artist centric.” Here, Imogen cites SoundCloud’s new All-In-One subscription service which, among other features, allows artists to press vinyl directly through SoundCloud. 
• For Eliah, the concept of ai.mogen is groundbreaking because unlike other chatbots on the market, ai.mogen “makes the AI work for you” in ways that “delight and bring you closer to your fans.” 

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How AI Can Empower Artists and Evolve The Artist-to-Fan Relationship

• When it comes to the use of AI in the contemporary music industry, Eliah acknowledges that many artists have concerns about what AI could mean for their music and careers. However, he also views AI as “a major opportunity for music” — and it’s up to platforms like SoundCloud to harness the positive power of AI. He explains the importance of achieving this through leveraging innovative tools, implementing the correct legal, ethical and economic frameworks, and respecting creativity and autonomy. 
• “We really believe that generative AI music tools will be the great democratizer of music creation,” Eliah says, of SoundCloud’s position. Here, Eliah discusses the issues that artists face today in music creation, how AI can be a problem solver for those issues, and how SoundCloud aims to responsibly use AI technology to create better artist and fan experiences on the platform, from creation to marketing, distribution and more.
• These are all subjects close to Imogen’s work. Here, she gets into more detail about how Auracles and ai.mogen utilize generative AI. She explains how with Auracles, she can grant connected platforms the necessary permissions to train other AI music tools from. For example, she can grant permission for using her own voice to train ai.mogen and give other artists permission to use her voice as a training model or track element as well. 
• By allowing other people to use her voice, with permission, “I can have extended releases, but I haven’t had to do anything other than ask permission and work with people that I love, but I just don't have time to get into the studio with,” Imogen says. “It's been really exciting to experience this kind of ease of collaboration.”
• As the relationship between artist-to-fan continues to evolve, Eliah sees a “virtuous circle” in effect: of fans becoming artists themselves, and of artists becoming more active fans in turn. It’s a circle that Imogen has long tapped into with her work in music technology. 

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How SoundCloud is Collaborating with Imogen Heap on Transformative Music Technologies

• For Imogen, as the horizon point of not knowing whether a piece of work is AI-generated or not draws ever closer, it’s critical that artists “draw a line in the sand” about issues around IP, copyright and ownership. 
• If the music industry doesn’t lead the way in finding equitable and ethical solutions, she continues, they are at risk of hitting that horizon point without the aforementioned legal, ethical and commercial frameworks in place to protect their IP and art. Bringing this into the development of Auracles, Imogen says that she’s aiming to create “a data layer of truth” so that the platform “can innovate confidently and ethically.”
• Eliah goes deeper on the topic with Imogen, bringing the wider ecosystem of music platforms into the conversation, and discusses SoundCloud’s plans to “put new revenue formats on the table” for artists on the platform. As artists themselves continue to innovate new ways of making and marketing their music, connecting with fans and building those audience networks, “it’s our responsibility to find ways to monetize those different forms of engagement, to put new dollars in artists’ pockets,” he says.
• Eliah breaks down how SoundCloud is working to elevate the streaming experience as a business model for artists, and how fans can more directly contribute to their favorite independent artists’ revenue streams through the platform.
• As Imogen sees it, it’s not just the job of platforms to push this innovation — it’s the job of artists, too. Artists need to “get their house in order” when it comes to organizing their information, so that platforms and their featured technologies can better serve artists in turn. Moving forward, Imogen sees the bridging of that gap as an exciting opportunity for fans, artists and platforms alike.

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Links and Extras 

Follow Imogen Heap’s journey on SoundCloud.
Press play on Imogen Heap’s 2025 album, ‘I AM___.’
Check out ai.mogen, Imogen Heap’s AI assistant. 
Join Auracles, Imogen Heap’s digital ID system for artists.
Hit play on Imogen Heap’s breakthrough 2005 album, ‘Speak For Yourself.’
Check out SoundCloud’s new All-In-One subscription service.
Never miss an episode and follow the official Sound Advice playlist on SoundCloud.

Getting The Most Out of SoundCloud

Learn more about using DMs to connect with fellow artists and potential collaborators.
Learn more about how to make a custom playlist on SoundCloud.
Learn more about unlimited uploads, available with an Artist Pro subscription.
Learn more unlocking access to unlimited distribution, available with Artist Pro.
Learn more about getting heard with SoundCloud’s updated algorithm, available to Artist and Artist Pro subscribers.

To discover additional features a SoundCloud Artist or Artist Pro subscription offers, visit here. To catch up on past installments of Sound Advice and make sure you don’t miss out on future episodes, visit here.

_{CREDITS Host: Vivian Host, Executive Producer: Mike Spinella, Producer: KC Orcutt, Audio Engineer: David “DibS” Shackney, Coordinator: Trevor McGee, Editorial Associate: Lauren Martin}

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