Apple acquires radio and podcast app Swell for $31.8M

Apple has announced an acquisition to beef up its iTunes Radio.

Swell, who developed the podcast streaming and personalised talk-radio app of the same name, was purchased for $31.8 million.

Re/code broke the news, reporting the service will be shut down this week as per the acquisition terms. Swell’s Chief Executive Ram Ramkumar (ex-Chief Architect for Amazon’s Visual Search) will join Apple, along with other key members of the company.

Apple’s current podcast service is expected to take a backseat; the app was integrated into the iPhone and iPad’s music player and while it allowed users to subscribe and play podcasts, it didn’t rate well in the iTunes store and didn’t provide the personalised experience Swell does.

The acquisition follows Apple’s recent content integration purchases like Beats, which it purchased for $3.2 billion in May and book recommendation service BookLamp, which it acquired last week for a predicted sum of between US$10-15 million.

Curated user streaming experiences are an obvious motive for content juggernauts of late. Google entered the Internet radio realm when it acquired Songza last month and in June Amazon launched streaming service Prime Music, which offers subscribers free, uninterrupted access to songs from two of the three major labels and a slew of independents.

Swell had a 4.5 star rating on the iTunes Store and had been testing an Android app for the service.