Daily Briefing: SingPost fined $100,000 for service standards failure; AI music startup Musiio clinches $1.36m seed fund

And here's what's new with Oakwood's revamped booking system.

From Yahoo! News Singapore:

SingPost suffers blows from its heaviest fine of $100,000 by the InfoComm Media Development Authority (IMDA) for its inability to meet service standards on delivering letters and registered mail back on nine separate incidents in 2017.

The authority added that, when meting out the fine, it took into consideration that this was not the first time SingPost had failed to comply with QoS standards, and the margin of failure was “significant” compared to its previous instances of non-compliance.

In view of this, SingPost is working with government agencies and the Union of Telecoms Employees of Singapore (UTES) to upgrade the postal workers’ skill-set and significantly expand its workforce.

Read more here.

From Deal Street Asia:

Singapore-based AI music startup Musiio secured $1.36m ($1m) in seed funding from Wavemaker Partners, US investor Exponential Creativity Ventures as well as other angels. The funding will be utilised to build better music playlists using AI and machine learning.

Its last $75,000 (US$57,000) seed round was backed by Entrepreneur First, which it enrolled in under EF’s accelerator programme in Singapore.

One of its recent clients was Free Music Archive (FMA) a free music site under US radio station WFMU. Musiio curated playlists for them that promoted the songs that had gotten “lost” in the lineup. Their technology reportedly helped one song track double within two days from the number of plays received over eight years.

Read more here. 

From TTG Asia:

Oakwood teamed up with Amadeus’ TravelClick in a revamp of its reservations platform to enable consumers to make immediate online bookings.

“Our customers have asked for more streamlined solutions with fewer points of contact, real-time booking, and more transparency in pricing. Our new global reservation system will achieve those goals by providing a single, integrated system for pricing and inventory globally,” said Chris Ahearn, Oakwood’s CEO, in a statement.

TravelClick’s proprietary iHotelier Booking Engine 4.0 provides a centralised e-commerce platform that enables Oakwood to guide guests through the booking process with interactive message displays, and targeted merchandising and add-on services.

Read more here.