AIMS in Synchtank: Four Common Misconceptions
That idea tends to come from other AI tools or from the word “AI” itself, and a few parts of it lead teams to search in ways that get them weaker results.
We hear the same assumptions in demos, during trials, and from teams that have used AIMS for a year.
So let's dive into what they are and what AIMS actually does.
1. “It’s a smarter keyword search”
AIMS analyzes the audio itself. When you search, it compares what you asked for against the sound of every track in the catalog, so how a track was tagged doesn’t decide whether it shows up.
In practice, every search covers 100 percent of the catalog, including alt versions, instrumentals, and submixes. A track with missing or wrong tags still comes up when it fits the brief.
This is also how the deep catalog starts earning. Most catalogs make around 90 percent of their revenue from roughly 10 percent of their tracks, and a big part of the reason is that the rest rarely appears in search results. When search runs on audio, those tracks land in brief responses next to the ones your team already knows.
The same applies to reference tracks. Paste the link from the brief or upload the file into Similarity Search, and AIMS returns tracks from your catalog with a similar feel. That’s often quicker than translating a reference into keywords.
2. “Lyrics Search matches words”
Lyrics Search reads for meaning. A search for “feeling lost in a big city” can return tracks whose lyrics are about exactly that, even when none of those words appear in them.
A lot of briefs describe the feeling they want: “loneliness in a crowd, late twenties, low-stakes melancholy.” Lyrics Search works from that description directly.
It gets even more useful paired with Prompt Search. Describe the sound in Prompt Search, describe what the song should be about in Lyrics Search, and the shortlist narrows quickly.
3. “AIMS replaces our tagging”
Your metadata stays where it is and keeps doing its job. Filters for tempo, genre, language, release date, etc. are still the fastest way to narrow a result set. Audio analysis covers what metadata can’t reach, such as a track that was never tagged for the use case in front of you.
Most sync teams we work with use both in the same search: audio to open up the catalog, metadata filters to narrow it down.
4. “AIMS generates music”
AIMS is a search tool. It finds tracks that already exist in your catalog and doesn’t create new ones. Our founders come from music publishing and sync. The team includes professional musicians, label and artist managers, and voting members of The Recording Academy. We built AIMS to take the search heavy-lifting off people’s plates, so they have more time for the calls that depend on taste and on their relationships with supervisors and artists.
Getting the most out of AIMS in Synchtank starts with understanding how it works and how to search with it. A few small shifts in how you approach music search can make a real difference to the results you find.
Want to see what AIMS can find in your Synchtank catalog? Get in touch with the Synchtank team to try it out.
Contact Synchtank here, learn more about AIMS here.
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