Spotify wants you to spend more time discovering music on its platform, so it just bought the company that's been helping you do so for years.
Spotify announced it is buying music data company The Echo Nest as a part of a greater effort to grow its global music-streaming service. The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
The Echo Nest, founded in 2005, is known for web crawling and data mining to determine what people want to listen to and make music suggestions. It's already been working with Spotify for years, but also provides its services to MTV, BBC, Nokia, VEVO and other companies.
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"Spotify was one of the first companies to access The Echo Nest's API starting as far back as 2008, so we've been friends with them for years," a Spotify spokesperson told Mashable. "The overall goal is to get people to listen to more music and make music discovery better for fans."
The Echo Nest API will still be free to use and support the developer community, which has been a key component to both companies' successes. The acquisition will also allow Spotify to help brands and partners build out their music experiences for users.
The startup will continue to work from its main office in Somerville, Mass. offices and satellite bureau in San Francisco.
The news comes just a day after on-demand music service Beats Music acquired Topspin Media to help musicians grow sales and increase their marketing efforts. Although the move from the newly-launched Beats Music service is focused on giving artists tools to get music heard, it also ramps up its music discovery strategy, which directly competes with Spotify.
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