Why can't Western AI models tag Arabic music accurately?

Arabic music uses the Maqam system with 24 quarter tones, while Western music theory relies on 12 semitones. AI models trained on Western data tend to round microtones to the nearest Western pitch, stripping the distinctive sound of Arabic scales. The Missing Melodies study found Middle Eastern music makes up 0.4% of major training datasets, so models have almost no reference material for these tonal systems.

What is the cold-start problem in music streaming?

Behavioral recommendation engines (like Spotify's collaborative filtering) need user interaction data, such as listens, skips, and saves, to recommend tracks. New or regional songs with no play history get no signals, so they don't surface in recommendations. Audio-based tagging systems like Cyanite's analyze the sound directly, generating metadata even for tracks with zero plays. You can read more about why Spotify buries AI songs and how recommendation systems shape visibility.

How many songs has Cyanite tagged in total?

Cyanite has tagged over 45M songs across 150+ clients. The Anghami deal adds 2.5M songs to this total. The company's Cyanite aptone acquisition in 2023 gave it the catalog-scale infrastructure needed for deals of this size.

Anghami and Cyanite: Western AI data fails Arabic music

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