Shazam-who? Spotify aims for their own song detection with Sonalytic.
Several weeks ago, Wall Street once again rejected Spotify’s IPO. Yet, that won’t stop Spotify from solidifying their lead in the music streaming world. Spotify recently scored 10 million paid subscriptions in record time, bringing their tally to 50 million. Now, the Swedish company has acquired British startup Sonalytic.
In a blog post, the company proudly announced,
“We’re happy to announce that Sonalytic is joining the Spotify family. The Sonalytic team is passionate about creating technology to improve the music ecosystem for artists and fans. Their advancements in audio feature detection will be used in several ways to advance Spotify’s mission: from improving Spotify’s personalized playlists to matching songs with compositions to improve our publishing data system. Stay tuned for new products we’ll bring to market with Sonalytic’s help.”
Yet, mum’s the word, as the Swedish streamer gave little information about the offering. Sonalytic, the London-based audio recognition company, recently opened its doors last year. The company currently holds patents that include the ability to identify individual songs. The company’s technology can also identify mixed content and short audio clips with unparalleled robustness and speed.
Yet, why did Spotify acquire Sonalytic? The Sun hypothesizes that the Swedish streamer will roll out a Shazam-style service rival. The official announcement from Spotify states that Sonalytic will help improve its personalized playlists. It will also help match songs with compositions, improving the company’s publishing data system. Yet, the key reason may lie hidden within the company itself.
According to a CrunchBase listing, the company aims to provide “a revolutionary new approach to content identification.” This approach, in turn, enables Sonalytic to “connect creators and rights-holders to monetisation opportunities.” Spotify’s acquisition may enable the streamer to not only match compositions better, but to also pay publishers and artists faster. With Spotify boasting soaring paid subscriptions, this may also help strengthen the company financially ahead of their long-awaited IPO.
As Spotify says in its announcement, users and fans will simply have to “stay tuned.”
Possibly, small step, to become subscription and advertising FREE DISCOVERY BASED music store! Then and only then Mr. Ek can enjoy $20B IPO.
We all just need GOOGLE boys to allow music to become merchandise AGAIN! Larry, don’t be a pedophile keeping FOREVER $300B music business in $16B infancy!
Hopefully so; However if we start talking about bigger paydays then the artists need to re-negotiate with their labels or go on strike.
Agree with Remi’s statement above. Serious reconfiguring of their ad system and free-giveaways needs to be re-examined.
I’d still consider exclusive merchandise not available on their websites or concerts. This can be a wini/win across the board for all parties involved; including the labels who own the rights to the 365 deals.
Another option is exclusive bootlegs or unplugged mini-concerts; exclusive tickets to small gatherings before the concerts, etc. In short, offer more through Spotify fans are not getting through traditional routes. Labels can pay a bit more to your artists instead of total greed; just partial) so they can eek out a decent living. Happy artists make for happier labels and even better content. Just make sure YouTube (who totally screws the artists) and Apple can’t squeeze in on or outbid for the exclusive rights. In short, be AGGRESSIVE!
you removed my comment. Why?