By Francis Bea
The educated guessing game is over. Verifying the music community’s suspicions surrounding Spotify and its own Pandora rivaling internet radio service, The Echo Nest revealed today that its music database and playlist generator is the engine responsible for powering Spotify Radio.
“Combining The Echo Nest’s intelligent playlist engine with Spotify Radio’s incredibly intuitive and inherently social service will certainly give Spotify users an amazing music discovery experience,” said Jim Lucchese, CEO of The Echo Nest.
Spotify Radio, offering users dynamic recommended playlists around a selected song or artist, is reminiscent of the capabilities boasted by internet radio powerhouses, namely Pandora, last.fm, Rdio, and Slacker Radio. To call their move into radio as just a jab and non-life threatening to current players in the space is an understatement. The neophyte has burst onto the scene with unlimited skips and unlimited stations – features other radio stations have been unable to legally obtain.
The devastating potential of the aftershock is evident. Even the leading Internet radio service provider, Pandora, was startled with the realization of its shareholder’s bearish outlook, evidenced by the one day drop in shares by 5.1% immediately following Spotify’s Radio unveiling.
But while most analysts are focused on Spotify versus Pandora, The Echo Nest’s Spotify partnership reveals a man verse machine rivalry that pits The Echo Nest’s “gun-for-hire” machine based music analysis and cataloging algorithm with Pandora’s in-house man powered music genome project.
Arguably, The Echo Nest’s algorithm requires the fine tuning to compete with Pandora’s human touch comprised of an in-house team of musicians and music professionals, but The Echo Nest’s competitive advantage relies on its machine’s capability to quickly and efficiently analyze far more tracks and data points at any given time. The extent of that is clear, as in September 2011, The Echo Nest had boasted a database of 30 million songs, compared to Pandora’s 1 million.
Only three months ago, The Echo Nest announced that its engine was powering Clear Channel’s darling, the acquired Thumbplay turned iHeartRadio, as their concerted response to Pandora. But the foreseeable consequences of relying on a third party database, like The Echo Nest, which is an understandable move for the cash strapped broadcasting corporation, has caught up with the decision and faces the inevitability of being eclipsed by its more prominent and established The Echo Nest partner and competitor. What is not surprising are that the differences between the two services are few and far in between.
With The Echo Nest and Spotify’s 15 million track catalogue, Spotify Radio is a clear mimicry of iHeartRadio’s The Echo Nest powered track and artist based playlist, with little product differentiation. Clear Channel’s internet radio Hail Mary faces immediate competitive disadvantages as, like other Internet radio stations, under DMCA laws users are limited to 6 track skips per hour.
Clear Channel declined to comment and could not later be reached for comments.
“With the help of The Echo Nest’s recommendation wizardry and our multi-million track library, Spotify Radio is now a music discovery experience without equal,” said Ken Parks, Chief Content Officer of Spotify.
How internet radio stations will react to Spotify’s competitive advantages, and how iHeartRadio will pivot their current strategy will be an interesting development.
Edit: In response to an inquiry regarding Spotify’s exclusion from the DMCA license, Jim Lucchese revealed, “Spotify is a direct-licensed, on-demand service, they are not subject to the non-interactive webcast rules of a DMCA compulsory licensed service like Pandora.”
Francis Bea is a New York City based writer, PR person, and tech junkie who’s solving the music industry’s woes with his start-ups, Musefy.com and Proptone.com. You can find him on @francisybea and @musefy.
The Echo Nest: Engine powering iHeartRadio powers mimicry app, Spotify Radio
0By Francis Bea
The educated guessing game is over. Verifying the music community’s suspicions surrounding Spotify and its own Pandora rivaling internet radio service, The Echo Nest revealed today that its music database and playlist generator is the engine responsible for powering Spotify Radio.
“Combining The Echo Nest’s intelligent playlist engine with Spotify Radio’s incredibly intuitive and inherently social service will certainly give Spotify users an amazing music discovery experience,” said Jim Lucchese, CEO of The Echo Nest.
Spotify Radio, offering users dynamic recommended playlists around a selected song or artist, is reminiscent of the capabilities boasted by internet radio powerhouses, namely Pandora, last.fm, Rdio, and Slacker Radio. To call their move into radio as just a jab and non-life threatening to current players in the space is an understatement. The neophyte has burst onto the scene with unlimited skips and unlimited stations – features other radio stations have been unable to legally obtain.
The devastating potential of the aftershock is evident. Even the leading Internet radio service provider, Pandora, was startled with the realization of its shareholder’s bearish outlook, evidenced by the one day drop in shares by 5.1% immediately following Spotify’s Radio unveiling.
But while most analysts are focused on Spotify versus Pandora, The Echo Nest’s Spotify partnership reveals a man verse machine rivalry that pits The Echo Nest’s “gun-for-hire” machine based music analysis and cataloging algorithm with Pandora’s in-house man powered music genome project.
Arguably, The Echo Nest’s algorithm requires the fine tuning to compete with Pandora’s human touch comprised of an in-house team of musicians and music professionals, but The Echo Nest’s competitive advantage relies on its machine’s capability to quickly and efficiently analyze far more tracks and data points at any given time. The extent of that is clear, as in September 2011, The Echo Nest had boasted a database of 30 million songs, compared to Pandora’s 1 million.
Only three months ago, The Echo Nest announced that its engine was powering Clear Channel’s darling, the acquired Thumbplay turned iHeartRadio, as their concerted response to Pandora. But the foreseeable consequences of relying on a third party database, like The Echo Nest, which is an understandable move for the cash strapped broadcasting corporation, has caught up with the decision and faces the inevitability of being eclipsed by its more prominent and established The Echo Nest partner and competitor. What is not surprising are that the differences between the two services are few and far in between.
With The Echo Nest and Spotify’s 15 million track catalogue, Spotify Radio is a clear mimicry of iHeartRadio’s The Echo Nest powered track and artist based playlist, with little product differentiation. Clear Channel’s internet radio Hail Mary faces immediate competitive disadvantages as, like other Internet radio stations, under DMCA laws users are limited to 6 track skips per hour.
Clear Channel declined to comment and could not later be reached for comments.
“With the help of The Echo Nest’s recommendation wizardry and our multi-million track library, Spotify Radio is now a music discovery experience without equal,” said Ken Parks, Chief Content Officer of Spotify.
How internet radio stations will react to Spotify’s competitive advantages, and how iHeartRadio will pivot their current strategy will be an interesting development.
Francis Bea is a New York City based writer, PR person, and tech junkie who’s solving the music industry’s woes with his start-ups, Musefy.com and Proptone.com. You can find him on @francisybea and @musefy.
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