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Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Apple Purchases British Music Start-Up


Semetric, British music analyst startup has been acquired by Apple Inc. as the company is looking to get an idea of the latest listening trends. The iPhone maker wishes to bolster this ability before it launches the Beats Music streaming service internationally this year. According to the information provided by an individual with knowledge of the transaction, the Cupertino, California giant paid a total sum of $50 million for the music startup that’s based in London. There are about 40 employees of the company and most of them now work for the iPhone maker. The deal drew to a close at the end of last year, but Apple refused to offer any details about it.

Founded in 2008, Semetric is renowned everywhere because of its brand called Musicmetric. The company provides information regarding music streaming and downloading and also offers an analysis of the opinion of the masses about songs and artists on social media. The client list of Semetric is made up of notable music companies such as Gracenote and Spotify and also various record labels. This deal with the American smartphone giant is one of the most significant deals made by any digital music company based in London, which includes Omnifone, 7digital and MixCloud.

On Wednesday, the music recognition app called Shazam said that in the latest funding round, they had managed to raise a sum of $30 million, which means that the British company is now valued at $1 billion. Apple is trying to assert its leadership in the digital media market and the purchase of Semetric is the company’s latest attempt. The company’s hold in this market has been waning as there was a significant flag in iTunes download over the past year. Last May, a subscription streaming service called Beats Music was acquired by the American firm as a part of the acquisition of Beats Electronics that cost $3 billion.

It is the company’s plan to introduce Beats Music along with its new iOS operating system in this year. In this way, the service would become available instantly on hundreds of millions of iPads and iPhones and increase the pressure on the market leader of the music streaming industry, Spotify. According to analysts of the industry, Apple will take advantage of the vast pool of data at Semetric and use it to make improvements in the song recommendations of Beat Music in order to establish a stronger connection with its users and fans.

Experts said that the analytics would be invaluable for understanding the tastes and preferences of users. Apple has made this deal with Semetric in order to get ahead in the race with digital music companies for acquiring the expertise and technology that’s needed for optimizing the way music is delivered to the listeners. Last year, Spotify had acquired The Echo Nest, a music analytics company for a handsome price of $100 million. The data gathered by this company is used for generating song and playlist recommendations. Apple didn’t say whether analytical data would be offered to other companies by Semetric after the acquisition.


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