※ Kyungpook National University Startup Support Foundation is operating the “Startup Leap Package (Large Enterprise Collaboration Track)” for startups together with SKT. The program promotes innovative growth by activating startups’ ideas and technological capabilities through collaboration with large enterprises. IT Donga introduces promising startups that participated in the Kyungpook National University·SKT Collaboration Track of the Startup Leap Package.

Chiloen provides “Linkmusic,” an AI-based background music search service. Linkmusic is a service that, when given text or images as input, allows AI to find suitable background music in about 10 seconds. Anticipating a time when generative AI will flood the market with music, Chiloen developed Linkmusic based on the view that services enabling users to quickly find the music they need will become even more important. Chiloen officially launched Linkmusic in December 2025 and secured more than 13,000 active users within a month of its release.

Chiloen is collaborating with SK Telecom (SKT) through the “Startup Leap Package – Large Enterprise Collaboration Type” program, a support project of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups’ Korea Institute of Startup & Entrepreneurship Development, organized by the Kyungpook National University Startup Support Foundation. Through this collaboration, it has provided background music creation and search functions for SKT’s V Coloring service.

IT Donga met with Chiloen CEO Cho Sung-in to discuss Chiloen and Linkmusic.


A music tech company combining music and IT, Chiloen

IT Donga: Please introduce yourself, CEO Cho.

CEO Cho Sung-in: I am Cho Sung-in of Chiloen. I majored in film scoring at Berklee College of Music in the United States and worked as a composer for drama and film OSTs and popular music. Then in April 2021, I founded Chiloen, a music tech specialist company.

IT Donga: What led you to establish Chiloen?

CEO Cho Sung-in: I returned to Korea in 2019 and enlisted in the military, and one of the fields I was interested in at the time was the metaverse. I believed that music would be needed in IT-related fields such as the metaverse, and decided to create a service that combines music and IT. When I was discharged in 2021, I founded Chiloen together with composers and developers. Initially, we had the metaverse in mind, but as interest in AI grew, we naturally moved toward preparing an AI-based music service.

IT Donga: Please introduce Chiloen.

CEO Cho Sung-in: Chiloen is a music tech startup that conveniently provides quality music. Our goal is to build an AI service that enables users to find the music they want within one minute. The company name Chiloen combines my composer stage name “Chilling Orange” with “entertainment,” reflecting our aim to focus on music content-related business.

After our founding, we went through service planning and technology development and launched “Keeneat” in October 2023. Keeneat is a generative AI service that creates high-quality background music (BGM); once the user sets the genre, tempo, length, and other parameters, it generates music within 30 seconds. We then developed an AI music search agent technology that quickly finds desired music and, in December 2025, launched the music search service Linkmusic.


Just enter text and images to get the music you want: Linkmusic

IT Donga: You recently introduced Linkmusic. What motivated you to develop it?

CEO Cho Sung-in: There are two main reasons behind Linkmusic’s development. The first is the needs of our target customer group, video editors. While operating Keeneat, we realized that for video editors, the key is not music generation itself, but quickly finding copyright-free music suitable for the video they are currently working on, in order to complete a high-quality video.

Currently, video editors spend a lot of time and effort selecting background music. They listen to tracks one by one on music services or platforms to pick out what they want, which takes a considerable amount of time. According to our own survey, it takes more than three hours just to select background music. We developed Linkmusic to address this inconvenience.

The second reason is to respond to changing trends. Recently, AI music creation services have advanced and diversified, making music production much easier. No specialized knowledge is required, and the time and cost needed to produce music have been greatly reduced. Before long, there will be an era overflowing with music. When that happens, services that help users accurately find the music they want will become more important than services that simply generate music. We developed Linkmusic to respond to this trend shift.

IT Donga: Please introduce Linkmusic. What kind of service is it?

CEO Cho Sung-in: Linkmusic is an AI-based background music search service that allows video creators to quickly search for the music they want. As mentioned earlier, it is a next-step service beyond music generation.

With Linkmusic, users can search for the desired music using a sentence or a single image. They can input dialogue, scene descriptions, or captured images from the video, and the AI presents an optimal list of music that matches the given prompt. Video search, however, is not supported. Most video editors find it cumbersome to extract part of the video they are working on and input it as a prompt. Taking into account the practicality for our target customers, we excluded video search.

After the prompt is entered, Linkmusic provides a suitable music list within about 10 seconds. It displays up to 20 tracks, and if users do not find what they want, they can continue searching. This reduces the inefficient process of having to repeatedly play and filter through hundreds of tracks and allows video editors to choose their preferred music more quickly and intuitively.

Delivering tailored music through similarity measurement algorithms

IT Donga: What differentiates Linkmusic from existing services?

CEO Cho Sung-in: Existing services offer large music libraries, but their classification systems, which filter using simple keywords such as composer, title, and genre, have limitations in search accuracy. Linkmusic improves search accuracy based on music search technology that uses similarity measurement algorithms. We classify musical characteristics into more than 40 keywords such as instrumentation, mood, tempo, energy level, and rhythm to generate quantitative metadata, then compare this with the analysis results of the text and images entered by the user, measure similarity, and present the results. This enables users to find the music they want more quickly. We are continuously advancing and upgrading our similarity measurement and matching algorithms.


IT Donga: How did you secure the music list that Linkmusic provides?

CEO Cho Sung-in: We provide music created through our existing service, Keeneat. This is to ensure that we offer users music without licensing concerns. We currently have around 5,000 tracks and add 400–500 tracks every month. Of course, if we simply focused on generating music, we could create thousands of tracks a day. However, we only upload tracks after professional composers review whether the generated music is of a level suitable for use in video.

We also operate a “founding creator” program, which is essentially a community to more efficiently understand the music that users want. When they request the type of music they need, we produce and deliver matching tracks and also upload them to the service. Recruitment for the founding creators began at the time of Linkmusic’s launch, and we are currently operating the program with about 100 members, maintaining ongoing communication.

IT Donga: Is Linkmusic offered only as a B2C service?

CEO Cho Sung-in: Alongside the B2C service, we also provide the Linkmusic application programming interface (API). The Linkmusic API is a B2B service that allows other services and products to integrate background music search. It can be easily integrated into clients’ software or hardware and used in a variety of products that require music functions, such as content-generating AI, video editing, VR, 3D/4D, metaverse, and healthcare.

IT Donga: How has the market responded since launch?

CEO Cho Sung-in: Linkmusic began beta service in February 2025, and after feature updates and enhancements, it was officially launched in December. The number of active users is increasing rapidly. Within one month, we secured over 13,000 active users, with about 400 daily users on average.

We are also steadily expanding our corporate client base. By pursuing collaborations on background music with services in various fields such as video content creation, healthcare, and digital humans, we are contributing to improving service quality.

Providing background music search for SKT’s V Coloring

IT Donga: You are currently participating in the Startup Leap Package – Large Enterprise Collaboration Type program. What outcomes have you achieved through this program?

CEO Cho Sung-in: Through the Startup Leap Package – Large Enterprise Collaboration Type program, a support project of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups’ Korea Institute of Startup & Entrepreneurship Development, we are collaborating with the Kyungpook National University Startup Support Foundation and SKT. Via this program, we received various forms of support, including business consulting, investor meetings, and open innovation introductions. Above all, the greatest outcome is that it enabled us to work with SKT.

We have been collaborating with SKT on background music features applicable to its visual call ringtone service “V Coloring.” SKT’s V Coloring service includes a feature that allows users to directly select background music, and we optimized and provided Keeneat and Linkmusic for this feature. Using Keeneat, we produced V Coloring–exclusive music, and by integrating Linkmusic, we enabled users to quickly search for the music they want.

The SKT representative expressed a high level of satisfaction with the ability to continuously provide V Coloring users with high-quality music tailored to their preferences. Building on this collaboration, we expect to maintain an ongoing relationship going forward.


IT Donga: Please tell us about additional features you plan to add and your future plans.

CEO Cho Sung-in: We intend to make various attempts so that a broad range of users can use the service more conveniently. We are preparing to offer Linkmusic in various forms, such as plugins for widely used video editing tools like Premiere Pro and Final Cut, and integrations with LLM services. We also plan to continue expanding our B2B API. Through this, we will increase our points of contact with users. In parallel, we will continue to advance our search technology and improve the service.

Our ultimate goal is to become a specialized music search assistant that enhances productivity in every field where music is needed. We plan to evolve into a solution that can search for optimal music within just one minute, without unnecessary music selection processes. After securing customer trust through service stabilization and advancement, we also aim to enter global markets.

Reporter Han Man-hyuk, IT Donga (mh@itdonga.com)

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