Endel will release 20 "mood and productivity-boosting albums" in 2019

An algorithm has been given a major label deal, making it the first agreement of its kind.

The music app Endel launched in Japan in November 2018 and became available to Alexa users this week.

Yesterday (March 21), Warner Music Group announced that it had signed Endel to a distribution deal, with plans in place to release 20 albums this year through the label’s Arts Division.

The app has already released five of those albums, forming the Sleep series – ‘Clear Night’, ‘Rainy Night’, ‘Cloudy Afternoon’, ‘Cloudy Night’, and ‘Foggy Morning’. The albums, which are intended as demos of what the app does when users generate inputs, can be streamed on Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play, and more. A spokesperson for Endel says the records are not designed to replace musicians.

The remaining 15 records will fall under the umbrellas of Focus, Relax, and On-The-Go, with each category featuring five different collections of tracks. The albums are described by the company as “mood and productivity-boosting.”

According to an Endel press release, it “produces personalised sounds to help you focus and relax”, using technology that is “backed by science and uses personal inputs such as time of day, location, heart rate, [and] weather to create custom sound frequencies to enhance one’s mood towards sleep, relaxation, and focus.”

Last year, a comedy band called Botnik released a song that had been written in the style of The Strokes using algorithms. ‘I Don’t Want To Be There’ featured on the group’s “mathematically perfect” album, ‘The Songularity’.