
Spotify acquires The Echo Nest to build a better music discovery engine - eshvk
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/03/06/spotify-acquires-echo-nest-build-better-music-discover-engine/#!yG6lq
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darylfritz
This frightens me. I'm a big Rdio fan and they use Echo Nest as their backend.
Has Spotify just found a way to secretly shut them down?

~~~
nicholassmith
Spotify has said they'll honour all standing business arrangements, so I
imagine Rdio will have time to move to another provider or try and bring it in
house.

~~~
saaaaaam
"We have a rolling one-year contract with you. It's just been renegotiated..."

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grinich
Really happy for these guys. :) I consulted with Norwest for technical due
diligence during the last fundraising round[1], and was super impressed with
what this team has built. Audio classification at scale is a really difficult
thing to get right.

They're also one of the few companies who have successfully navigated the
minefield of the music business, which takes a painstaking amount of focus and
determination. But above all, they created a remarkable service to powering
the next-generation of music experiences. Spotify seems like an obvious fit
(especially given the Spotify Platform[2]), and I'm really excited to see
where they go next.

As an aside, The Echo Nest has been a huge supporter of the start/tech scene
in Boston. For 5 years now they organized "Music Hack Day"[3] which brought
together musicians and engineers to build fun projects. Here's hoping they
keep it up!

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/07/12/echo-
nest-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/07/12/echo-nest-
raises-17-million-for-big-data-analysis-of-music/)

[2] [https://developer.spotify.com/](https://developer.spotify.com/)

[3] [http://blog.echonest.com/post/66776489063/the-echo-
nests-5th...](http://blog.echonest.com/post/66776489063/the-echo-nests-5th-
music-hack-day-boston-was-a-roaring)

~~~
radley
But now they're just "Nextflix data". Let's revisit in a few years and see how
open they still are.

------
saaaaaam
I think this is a disaster. It's an awful, hideous, stupid (stupid for the
wider industry) defensive acquisition on Spotify's part, paid for, presumably
largely, by stock - I doubt they really have the cash to buy companies of the
scale of The Echonest, who have taken close to $30m in investment.

It destroys value in The Echonest - and every other non-consumer-facing music
service out there. The beauty of The Echonest was that they DIDN'T sell to
punters. And now, they've been bought in a deal paid for (assumption on my
part) with made up value, based on an exit some time soon. It's basically a
huge signal that Spotify is preparing for an IPO, which will help the major
labels (considerable stock holders - and stake holders) realise a return on
their early 'in-faith' investment in Spotify - which has been massively
rewarded by unbelievable ($100m+) catalogue advances and equity. Streaming
doesn't make money. It will - one day - but right now, there is no certainty
that Spotify will come out on top, or even as a player in this space in five
years, ten years, whatever.

The whole streaming thing has been the biggest wholesale transfer of capital
from investors to labels that the music industry has ever seen. Spotify is now
"too big to fail". The advances the labels have taken, and the equity they
have been given means that it is near impossible for them to let the streaming
model of doing business fail. Even if it's currently cannibalistic of their
other revenue, and even if there's a huge PR backlash from artists who don't
understand that consumption models have changed. The Majors have been given
enough _actual cash_ that they can afford to stick it out.

The Echonest is one of the most exciting companies - if not THE most exciting
company - in the music space today. They've taken approaching $30m of funding,
and I have no idea what Spotify had to pay for a company who are presumably
fighting off acquisition on a day by day basis from people who want to become
players in the music industry. There are about ten buyers I can imagine would
have wanted to beat the highest bidder.

Beats bought Topspin yesterday. A completely pointless acquisition, based,
presumably, on Ian Rodgers' history with that company. Today, Spotify announce
their acquisition of The Echonest. Neither company has ANYTHING exciting - on
a day to day basis - to report (woo! new interface! woo! more shit headphones!
woo! an artist partnership! which our competitors announce tomorrow! woo!) -
and apart from the lacklustre launch of Beats earlier in the year, no one in
that space has had anything exciting to report in ages.

Streaming music is BORING. It's now pretty much just a commodity service, and
it's becoming a very dull market, where the major players have nothing to
distinguish themselves. The land grab is over, it's about who can sign what
partnerships (people talked about Metcalfe's law with Whatsapp, but there's
something similar at play here now - how can we partner with to bring massive
numbers of consumers to our service? The landscape changes after Nokia and
BOinc fucked that one up, but it won't be long before operators/ISPs try to
get back in that game as partners rather than providers...)

CURATION! DISCOVERY! ACCESS! It's boring as hell. How do you announce
something and get some press attention? - buy something that IS exciting!

We're looking at a race to the bottom.

Spotify have two or three options with The Echonest; leave it as it is and let
it power their competitors discovery engines; take it in house, shut it down
for everyone else, and steal a brief competitive march on the other guys;
absorb it, keep it as it is, but charge shitloads for the API to other
services, generating a real (non-consumer) revenue stream for the company. Any
of these, though, it's just sad.

Music streaming is not innovation - it's reached the point that it is just
another commoditised service now, and very soon we'll be at the stage that
consumers just don't care where their music comes from; it will just be
another bundled offering from infrastructure services (mobile, TV, ISP), or
businesses like Netflix and Amazon, who are destroying conventional content
payment models from the outside in. iTunes Radio, anyone? iOS carplay launched
ONLY with audio partners, and iTunes want to steal that market 100%.

Absolutely and without doubt, when Amazon Prime bundles in a streaming
service, I will cancel my existing streaming provider contract - because,
unlike Lovefilm vs Netflix, there is absolutely no catalogue differentiation.
If you're streaming music, you stream ALL the music, not a bit of it - and
that is the way services have been built, not least because of the way the
whole digital supply chain in music works. You can't have a BIT of the
catalogue - you have all of it. The labels (hello, TV & film studios - wake
up!) saw this very early on (or, at least, very early on in this part of the
emerging narrative) - the more people who supply their content, the better,
and the more money they and the rights holders make.

There are a few really exciting companies for whom The Echonest would have
been a perfect target - people with brilliantly complementary data sets that
could dovetail with their business. To sell out to an uncertain-futured
company like Spotify is just sad.

Sigh.

~~~
pooMonger
That was quite the skewering.

Please [/shamelessplug] critique the potential of
[http://spawnsong.com](http://spawnsong.com) as a music streaming service.

Elon Musk instructed me to elicit bad feedback, and man, do you know how to
give it.

~~~
colinwinter
^^^Nice way to seize the moment. Interesting website concept. Just a
suggestion for the homepage: since the top header is so tall, how about moving
the play song links from the bottom of each song-artwork to be a universal
play symbol (arrow) overtop the artwork, maybe increasing from translucent to
full opacity upon hovering, noting contrast issues with relevant artwork.
NOTE: at my 1080p pc monitor and font size settings I dont even see the song
title 'above the screen's fold', so you may even want to think about that as
well, maybe the same solution as the playbutton using overlay and opacity
settings. It is a cool header bg though so dont mess with that, except maybe
moving the search box onto it since having it below eats vertical space from
the song listings as well.

Last point/question: I'm assuming the $1600 headphone giveaway is for the
musicians, not listeners. Good growth tactic but maybe make it more clear OR
offer something to listeners as well. I don't know much about the song
development process market but maybe implement or communicate something about
whats expected/gained from listeners for improving the music (assuming you
actually want to help musicians rather than eat their souls lol)

EDIT: minor ui change to song pages: move everything on the separate login
page as an embedded form on song pages (above the comments). No need to ask me
to click and hope you've integrated with my favorite 3rd party.

EDIT2; Startup based advice: you might want to look into the business model of
that site that advertised on thepiratebay using popups autoplaying (fairly
decent) music videos of indie artists competing for a prize. Cant remember the
name or find it on google, maybe it shutdown? Had a one wordish name derivied
from video, definitely started with a V

------
mox1
The fact that so many of these online services are basically using The Echo
Nest to build their "music discovery" engines (aka their radio option) is a
bit unnerving. What's there to differentiate them if they all use the same
methods to pick what song they send you...?

Also shameless plug, I got really tired of Spotify, Pandora, last.fm robotic
stations and built ([http://www.ssradio.me](http://www.ssradio.me)). 100% NOT
powered by Echo Nest.

~~~
acjohnson55
It depends. EchoNest has a similar track feature for any given track, which
could trivially be used for playlisting. But it also provides an incredible
amount of data. There are countless ways you could create different
playlisting algorithms with their APIs.

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maxerickson
One of the technical people at Echo Nest writes some pretty interesting posts
about music and how they analyze it. He mentions the acquisition today:

[http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=log&id=399](http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=log&id=399)

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daturkel
I was a QA intern at Echo Nest in Somerville over the summer and was super
surprised to see this today! They're a really a fantastic and fun group of
people and doing incredible work, having a fun time while they do it.

(Speaking, naturally, only my own opinions here:) I'm excited for the
possibilities of growth that it'll offer the company, but also a little
nervous about how it'll affect the Nest's ability to serve their other
(previous?) clients. I personally signed on with Rdio because I loved the deep
Echo Nest integration—I hope that's not going anywhere.

Looking hopefully, but anxiously, towards the future.

~~~
noname123
Hi, I'm curious what are the other applications of Echo Nest API besides music
recommendation? Can it assist composers or performance artists in composition?
(e.g., input scores of Charlie Parker, output a solo on key of X based on
previous known solo's). Can it identify harmonic structures in music? (e.g.,
which mode is used in song X and in a composition, when a key is changed). I
also live in the greater Boston area and has always viewed EchoNest with
curiosity, so very curious what you can do with their API other than their
"acoustic fingerprinting" (e.g., genre/bpm/key/mood/color etc.)

~~~
diydsp
The API has some excellent stuff regarding audio segmentation. It represents
any track as a list of ~2,000 segments. Each segment has energy in 12
chromatic bins measured, too. There's also information on beat times, and a
Machine-Learning-based estimate of verse/chorus/solo and even more great stuff
like that.

Full on auto-transcription like you hint at is a hard AI problem, like speech
recognition, which will never by fully solved (according to me), but I, for
one, would LOVE to see a musical editor enhanced by EchoNest metadata. One of
these days, i'll add to to Audacity hahaha.

BTW, if you are in Boston area, come to the Music-Tech meetup. It's a "gem"
and I'll be happy to intro you to the EN API (I worked there 6 years ago as a
consultant).

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untog
There's a separate thread discussing the actual Echo Nest post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7353874](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7353874)

------
citricsquid
I hope Spotify acquire last.fm at some point.

~~~
aggronn
Why? How would that help last.fm users?

~~~
hammock
Last.fm has a great neighbor-based recommendation engine. Combine that with
Echo Nest's user-based machine learning approach and Spotify's user base, and
you have a pretty robust product

~~~
aggronn
As a grooveshark user who loves last.fm, i don't like this idea.

------
julesbond007
Oh wow! These guys are in Davis Square in Somerville not far from me...I've
been working on some idea about the same thing for 4 years now...back then
people would laugh at the idea because Pandora was already there. But now?

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transpy
I had just started to dabble with python and echo nest (the remix API if I
remember correctly) and now I wonder if their system will still be available
or if now it is going to be proprietary/closed.

~~~
radley
I figure as long as Paul Lamere is around it will stay open.

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r721
The Echo Nest blog announcement:

[http://blog.echonest.com/post/78749300941/the-echo-nest-
join...](http://blog.echonest.com/post/78749300941/the-echo-nest-joins-
spotify)

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transpy
This is very interesting, correct me if I'm wrong, but Spotify was one of the
power users of echo nest's APIs. Maybe they had to use it so much that they
had to acquire it.

~~~
untog
Correct - IIRC their entire Radio feature is powered by The Echo Nest.

~~~
anonymoushn
I'm sad to hear this, since the Radio feature is pretty bad. I guess that
means losing The Echo Nest is no big deal, though.

~~~
whopa
Rdio also uses The Echo Nest for their radio feature, and it's great. I always
chalked up Spotify's radio sucking vs. Rdio's radio being so good due to
Spotify having shitty integration with The Echo Nest... maybe that will
change. One thing that always struck me about Spotify is that they never
seemed to put a priority on anything around actual music discovery.

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iambatman
I think it's crazy that echonest still doesn't have any album information in
their api, for building anything to do with music when is album info not
useful?

~~~
acjohnson55
Maybe they don't want to duplicate the effort of MusicBrainz. MusicBrainz is
about warehousing preexisting metadata (track listings, credits, etc.),
whereas EchoNest specializes in using algorithms to extract novel features.

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cheshire137
Great, this'll probably adversely affect Rdio and I'll have to leave them to
go back to Spotify with its shitty mobile apps.

------
mattgreenrocks
Not surprising at all. Echo Nest does a great job solving a not-easy problem.
Hope they remain accessible to the public afterwards.

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whirlycott1
Congrats Brian, Tristan and Jim!

~~~
diydsp
Yes, a good example of sticking with an idea and growing it slowly and
steadily for years and years and years! Also, of pivoting and sticking to
business-to-business solutions.

Earlier on, their projects involved creative remixing of music, but they
extinguished them in favor of supporting other businesses [1]. _We should all
take a cue from them!_

[1] But there is still lots of creativity which takes place at their
hackathons! [http://blog.echonest.com/post/69095723329/automatic-music-
ha...](http://blog.echonest.com/post/69095723329/automatic-music-hackathon-
music-that-plays-itself)

------
antocv
Spotify and similar disservices mean death to a culture of music.

Like Carthage, it is my opinion that Spotify and the music /industry/ founded
on copy-theft must be burned down.

~~~
tunesmith
I've felt the same but the syllogism path is hard to explain. Basically, many
of these services are founded the same way Amazon was founded - completely
unsustainable and then hoping something magic happens to make it sustainable
later. Amazon wouldn't have survived without the dotcom scene going crazy and
they barely got through to the other side. The music services exist by seeking
to convince end users that they are entitled to "mostly free" music, and they
only reason they can supply that service is with debt funding. Their hopes is
that the appetite they instill in the end user will give the business enough
support to argue favorable licensing terms from labels and the government.

So when that happens, the party that hurts is the songwriter. You already have
way too many people believing the canard that an indie songwriter should only
expect to make money through touring and merchandise, and never from their
recording efforts. That opinion is self-serving and pushed by those services
"use your songs as a marketing expense!" when it is actually supposed to be
the musician's livelihood.

So what happens when a musician gets less and less likelihood of getting any
kind of financial remuneration from their actual songwriting? It's a
disincentive to focusing on original craftsmanship, and an incentive to focus
on churning out greater volumes of homogenous crap in an effort to capture a
very tiny piece of a very large homogenous pie.

The end result from the perspective of the listener is that they never
experience the counterfactual; they never know what they're missing. Sure, you
might be enjoying that latest "indie" piece that is really just a max martin
form with a decemberists diphthong singing tone combined with a couple of
dubstep beats, but is that _really_ original?

~~~
diydsp
You've got some good points, but I actually believe it's a bit bleaker :)

I believe the role of the musician is too important to be simply cast as a
typical capitalist job- e.g. do it 40 hours and get a salary. Although I'll
accept this until the rest of sedentary culture reforms (not likely in this
life).

The problem is our celebrity culture. We turn our efforts away from the 1000s
of less famous musicians around us to the handful of celebrity musicians.

Classical music culture, with its reverence and deification of a handful of
sponsored artists, provides the template for rock music. Hip hop culture
successfully followed the template. Jazz mainly dodged it. Recorded media
(sheet music and the record) catalyzed it.

Any technological aid to music culture can be judged by whether it leads to
the (imo benevolent) fractioning of music - the re-directing of attention
toward our immediate musicians - or whether it leverages and bolsters the
celebrity culture. Any capitalistic enterprise is blind - or farcical - to
these ends and will randomly support whatever ends lead to its own survival.
However, this randomness must be biased toward existing resources, e.g. if not
doing well, support the thread of celebrity culture to survive. This pattern
continues for the individual musician, too, as you point out.

So, from this perspective, I appreciate services which connect individuals
with musicians of their choosing, but it's not like connecting people to
Primary Care Physicians, a geographically-constrained problem. Instead, it
facilitates people following their own flawed decision-making processes,
following the crowds. So it becomes an issue of individual freedom, which I
adore, even though so many people will not use it optimally for themselves.

