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After the news of two Apple's acquisitions last week, a report yesterday revealed that Apple had bought another company, the Asaii music analysis start-up, for less than $ 100 million; the report led to a "confirmation" of a shareholder in a separate report. But it turns out that neither one nor the other seems to be correct.
But we asked and Apple refused to confirm the agreement and did not give the go-ahead for the use of its usual statement – the one it often made when acquiring smaller startups. (You can see an example in this story about the purchase of Spektral, a startup in the computer vision industry, last week, which we asked Apple to confirm.) That's because the company at do not acquired the assets of the startup.
What she did was hire some of the company's employees – especially the three founders, Sony Theakanath, Austin Chen, and Chris Zhang – all of whom now work at Apple at Apple Music. (Apple has already done this before: for example, she recruited a team from the PinDrop mapping application in the UK, at the time, this acquisition had also been reported erroneously.)
It is unclear whether the three will be working on similar technology or other types of tools that may affect how music is discovered on Apple Music. Apple has already launched a beta version of its own analytics service called Apple Music for Artists.
Asaii announced in September that he would stop his service on October 14 (yesterday). She also provided music analysis, but focused on a larger image across multiple platforms (not just a single silo like Apple Music or Spotify).
Spotify – the music streaming business that is currently the main rival of Apple – has added a number of features over the years (some built in-house, others by acquisition) to enhance services that it offers artists to have more transparency their music and their "brands" happen on Spotify. For Spotify, it is a suite of services designed to help them use Spotify as a distribution platform to enhance their overall artistic activity.
Some believe that Spotify will continue to develop these services over time to assume more of a traditional label features in order to improve its margins and provide more utility to the artists. This is happening at a time when many musicians and songwriters are increasingly disappointed with the music industry and how they can (or can not, as the case may be) benefit from it.
It goes without saying that Apple could also consider creating similar features in Apple Music – although the company has not confirmed its willingness, it would not use Asaii's existing tools either.
To be clear, Apple already has some features to help promote and understand the performance of music on its platform. The beta version of Apple Music for Artists, launched in June this year, currently provides details on plays, radio shows, song purchases and album purchases.
It also allows you to examine the trends of your music, to define the appearance of your artist profile and to know how and where your music is discovered. Separately, it also provides various widgets that you can use to promote your Apple Music songs elsewhere, as well as instructions on best practices.
But there is still a lot of work for Apple in the music business, both in terms of the tools it can provide to artists to enhance their experience there; and also on how consumers discover and use music on the service. These two areas are potential areas that you might see develop over time.
Theakanath and Chen had both worked at Apple. PitchBook cites SkyDeck, a UC Berkeley-based accelerator, as its sole investor. Meanwhile, Crunchbase lists The House Fund as the only investor, without specifying the amount raised.
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