Spotify beefs up AI investment with new acquisition

Spotify’s music discovery technology and recommendation features are arguably the best and most widely used in the streaming market – and they’re about to get a whole lot more intelligent with this latest acquisition.

Spotify has purchased four-year-old artificial intelligence start-up Niland, the fourth tech innovator acquired by Spotify this year.

The French company and its team will join Spotify’s research and development (R&D) division in New York. Using its API-based product, Spotify can offer more accurate search and personalised recommendation options for music.

But Spotify is merely adapting to the market. Its 2015-launched Discovery Weekly personalised playlist service reached 40m users in its first year.

Niland, which graduated the Paris-based startup accelerator program Agoranov, will piggyback off of Spotify’s tech offered through The Echo Nest, the music intelligence firm acquired by Spotify for US$60m in 2015.

“Niland has changed the game for how AI technology can optimise music search and recommendation capabilities and shares Spotify’s passion for surfacing the right content to the right user at the right time,” Spotify said in a statement.

Spotify’s three other acquisitions this year all complement its goal to lead music intelligence in the streaming sector. In March, Spotify purchased UK-based makers of an audio detection technology Sonalytic and TV recommendation platform MightyTV, a content recommendation platform that has been called ‘Tinder for television’.

Then in April it bought Brooklyn-based blockchain startup Mediachain to help connect artists and other rights holders with Spotify-hosted tracks.

According to sources, Spotify is expected to go public as a direct listing on the NYSE between Q4 2017 and Q1 2018. If sources are correct, we can expect even more acqusitions from the big green giant.

Before that though, local eyes are watching for the successfor to Kate Vale, Spotify’s Australia & New Zealand Managing Director who announced her exit last week.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.