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Spotify buys The Echo Nest

By | Published on Thursday 6 March 2014

The Echo Nest

Spotify has announced that it has acquired music data and technology firm The Echo Nest. The two companies will work together with the aim of improving Spotify’s overall user experience, particularly in music recommendations and discovery.

For the time being, The Echo Nest will continue to operate as normal, maintaining its offices in Somerville, Massachusetts and San Francisco. Also, the company will continue to offer its API, on which numerous music apps are built, for free, Spotify stating that it recognises that “the developer community is crucial to the success of both Spotify and The Echo Nest”.

As well as many small third party developers, users of the data the Echo Nest API provides include Clear Channel, Universal Music, Sony Music, Pandora, Vevo, Rdio, the BBC, eMusic, Twitter and Beats Music. Meanwhile, companies which provide data to it include Rhapsody, Deezer, 7digital, Songkick, Discogs and, of course, Spotify.

Announcing the deal, Spotify chief Daniel Ek said: “We’ve been fans of The Echo Nest for a really long time and honoured to have their talented team join Spotify. At Spotify, we want to get people to listen to more music. We are hyper focused on creating the best user experience and it starts with building the best music intelligence platform on the planet. With The Echo Nest joining Spotify, we will make a big leap forward in our quest to play you the best music possible”.

Echo Nest CEO Jim Lucchese added: “Since founding The Echo Nest, Brian Whitman and Tristan Jehan have created a company completely and beautifully obsessed with understanding the world of music to help fans discover more music. Joining forces with Spotify gives us the opportunity to continue doing so as part of the fastest-growing service in the world; we’re thrilled to be part of a team equally as passionate about connecting more people with more music”.

Earlier this week, and as previously reported, Beats Music announced that it had acquired direct-to-fan company Topspin. While both deals will have differing effects on user experience, Spotify’s purchase seems like the stronger of the two. And, certainly, The Echo Nest seems confident that this is the case, its co-founders saying in a blog post that with Spotify they’re “going to change how the world listens”.



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