Made by ikigai unveils human-composed music catalogue amid AI music boom

Made by ikigai has launched "Origami", a standalone music catalogue positioned as an alternative model for bespoke music production, as the industry continues to grapple with the trade-off between speed and craft.

"Origami" is a curated library of pre-composed tracks created by human artists, designed to be adapted to film projects once a brief comes in. Rather than starting from scratch on every project, music creatives select existing compositions and tailor them to fit the edit, allowing clients to test how the music works against their film earlier in the process.

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The model removes what the company describes as a common friction point in production timelines, where traditional bespoke scoring can take several days or weeks, often leaving limited room for iteration once an edit is already advanced.

Speaking on the launch, Ryan Dickinson, founder of made by ikigai, said the approach has already been tested with clients over the past year.

“We’ve been quietly running this model with clients for over a year. It helps take the guesswork out of whether an existing track will fit a film, or whether a bespoke brief will come back as expected a few days later,” he said.

Rather than using algorithmically generated or AI-composed music, "Origami" is built entirely from human-composed work, with tracks selected, reshaped and adapted depending on the brief.

Early adopters include agencies such as VCCP, Ogilvy and Wieden+Kennedy, with the model being used on projects where timelines are tight but craft remains a priority.

Dickinson pointed to Airwallex’s collaboration with McLaren F1, “Shifted perspectives”, produced by Whale, as an example of how the approach is used in practice. In that case, the team selected an existing composition, adapted it to a near-final edit, and worked with the original composer to re-record elements based on client feedback.

“This allowed us to deliver an original track with a real artist behind it, but within a timeline and iteration cycle that traditional bespoke scoring would struggle to match,” he said.

Made by ikigai first expanded into APAC in January 2025 as a full-service music agency specialising in music and sound for advertising, gaming, TV and film. 

In conversation with MARKETING-INTERACTIVE at the time, Dickson said the agency's focus has always been to keep things personal and develop relationships as organically and in person as possible while having a global reach. "Our aim isn’t to be the biggest in the world, but to instead achieve sustainable and steady growth whilst living our personal ikigai's," explained Dickinson

Some of its clients across the globe include McDonald's, Amazon and Disneyland Hong Kong. 

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