According to media accounts, Apple has acquired Asaii, a music analytics company focused around the discovery of new and emerging artists. This development comes after Asaii announced on October 14th that it would be shutting down.
Apple dominated the digital music landscape with its launch of iTunes in 2003, and launched Apple Music in 2015 focused on finding new artists to promote. Apple’s dominance has been threatened by the consumer shift to online streaming music. Although competitors such as Spotify and Pandora had a few years head start, Apple Music is already making up lost ground. Apple has been trying to catch-up while consolidating its strength as a most popular digital music platform.
Asaii’s flagship offering is a dashboard that pulls together data from both music services and social media. This dashboard is advertised as having multiple uses, such as helping record labels plan marketing campaigns and live tours. Apple is expected to use the Asaii platform to identify and sign-up emerging artists and make better recommendations to listeners.
According to an Axios report, Apple reportedly paid less than $100 million for Asaii.
Some in the media, like analysts at techCrunch are claiming this is an acquire-hire – No, Apple didn’t acquire music analytics startup Asaii, it hired the founders to work on Apple Music