Apple has bought music analytics company Assai in an effort to improve Apple Music playlists. In particular, the technological giant aims at improving user experience by matching content recommended playlists to customers’ preferences. According to several unofficial sources, the transaction amounts to less than $100M.
So far, both parties have refused to comment on the deal. However, the purchase was confirmed by the founder of The House, a start-up accelerator which was the first to invest in Asaii:
“As the first investors in Asaii, we are incredibly excited by their recent acquisition by Apple where they will have the opportunity to dramatically scale their impact and continue building out their vision for the future of the music industry.”
Asaii is a San Francisco-based company which allows labels and managers to discover, track and manage talents through machine learning. Company’s algorithms aim to predict which artist will top the charts next – “to find the next Justin Bieber, before anybody else” says a company official. Asaii has two main products, a music dashboard for A&Rs (artists and repertoire) to quickly scout and manage talent, and an API (application programming interface) for services to integrate a recommendation engine into their platforms. The team behind Asaii has previously been part of companies like Uber, Apple, Facebook and Yelp.
The news come only a month after Apple acquired music discovery app Shazam. Industry experts suggest that the two transactions will help Apple to compete against Spotify, the leader in music streaming services.