Apple Acquires Music Analytics and Artist Discovery Service Asaii

• Apple has acquired Asaii, a music service company that was shut down on October 14.
• The news was confirmed by one of the newly acquired company’s first investors Cameron Baradar.
• Apple will be looking to implement the service to its Apple Music App for upcoming artist recommendations.

Apple is set to make yet another big acquisition after finalizing a deal with Dialog Semiconductor for $600 million recently. Music analytics company Asaii has struck a deal with Apple which will allow the tech giant to take advantage of its music services. It is likely that the music service will be implemented to Apple Music. Asaii comes with a recommendation algorithm that allows users to find upcoming artists based on their music listening preferences. The acquisition is said to have costed Apple under $100 million, and it is the second music-based acquisition the tech giant has made after acquiring Shazam, an app focused on song-identification.

The acquisition was confirmed by The House founder Cameron Baradar, who was one of the first to invest in Asaii. Baradar revealed, “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.”

The acquisition was confirmed further with many of Asaii’s employees updating their LinkedIn profiles to list Apple as their current employer. Asaii announced that it would be shut down on October 14^th and it seems like Apple is trying to push its Apple Music service against arch-competitor Spotify, which offers a range of unique features. One of the biggest advantages Spotify has over Apple is the freemium version of the service, which allows users access to all of the content but with ads. Apple Music has no such offering, and all of the plans available are premium.

Apple Music has been dominating in the US after dethroning Spotify earlier this year. However, Spotify’s presence globally is still quite strong due to a large number of users taking advantage of the free ad-supported offering. Apple has been trying to bridge the gap after letting unsigned artists upload music directly to Apple Music which is proving to be a key differentiator in the music streaming market. Asaii not only offers recommendations based on its patented algorithm, but the service also offers a unique discover section that uses AI to recommend relevant music via a dashboard.

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