Spotify Could Use It’s New Acquisition To Take On Soundcloud
Last year rumors swirled that Spotify was in talks to buy SoundCloud. Spotify's interest eventually waned, apparently because it did not want strain it's pre-IPO balance sheet. But a new Spotify acquisition could make it possible – even easy – for them to become a SoundCloud-like home for the millions of indie mixes and other d.i.y. content.
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Yesterday, we reported that Spotify had acquired Sonalytic, a UK startup that creates technology that can identify songs, mixed content and stems while enabling monetization for rightsholders.
I suggested that in addition to its public intent to use Sonalytic's audio detection to improve its personalized playlists and to match songs with compositions to improve their publishing data system, Spotify could use it to build its own Shazam.
But music technologist Hendrik Schreiber shared a more intrguing possibilty with Stuart Drudge of Music Ally. Instead of buying SoundCloud, as had been rumored last year, Spotify could use Sonalytic's tech to build and launch its own SoundCloud-like service and open its platform to millions of user generated tracks.
@stuartdredge @musically It also provides the legal basis for offering a service like SoundCloud or MixShare:
Being able to identify stuff…— Hendrik Schreiber (@h_schreiber) March 7, 2017
Just a few days ago I analyzed 430,00 search results from Spotify, YouTube and SoundCloud to determine if Spotify or YouTube would have more to gain by acquiring SoundCloud’s content
https://medium.com/p/what-if-soundcloud-were-acquired-by-spotify-or-youtube-c34ad7fa5ce6
Doesn’t that open the door to becoming an infringing site like YouTube and creating even more financial problems for artists? Which begs the question of how quickly can congress make long overdue changes to the DMCA.