Ad supported music streaming service Spotify is partnering with The Echo Nest's music intelligence platform to expand its playlist and music discovery functions.
The Echo Nest machine learning system, which was created by two MIT PhDs, listens to and reads about music across the web. The company offers an API of its "musical brain" that powers recommendations by "understanding" every song, review and news article on a music site or blog.
How Echo Nest works:
- It reads about music, constantly analyzing millions of blog posts, reviews, playlists and discussion forums to understand how the online world describes every artist, album and song.
- It listens to music, with technology actually listens to audio files, extracting musical attributes, such as tempo, instrumentation, key, time signature, energy, harmonic and timbral structures, to understand every song in similar ways a musician would describe it (e.g. "heavy beat, swing groove, fast tempo, 4/4 time, key of B flat, mezzo piano")
- It learns about music trends, analyzing the entire world of online music behavior - who's talking about which artists this week, what songs are being streamed and downloaded, etc. - to understand the latest trends, buzz and fan opinion.
"We're committed to powering the most engaging and intelligent online music applications." says Jim Lucchese, CEO of The Echo Nest. "Spotify delivers an amazing user experience for music lovers around the world. We're thrilled to help millions of music fans discover new favorites through Spotify's massive music selection and great user interface."
