Some of you may have only heard about The Echo Nest recently when they released a series of maps depicting music listener’s streaming habits online. The Somerville-based company has been churning out musical analytical data for a while now, and they’ve caught the eye of the monster streamers Spotify. In an official news statement on The Echo Nest’s blog they said,

“Spotify shares the intense care for the music experience that was the founding principle of our company, and it’s clearly winning the hearts and minds of music fans around the globe. Our dedicated team of engineers, scientists, music curators, business, and product people are utterly electrified with the potential of bringing our world-leading music data, discovery, and audience understanding technology directly to the biggest music streaming audience out there.
Together, we’re going to change how the world listens.”

Spotify acquiring The Echo Nest isn’t quite surprising, and it will be a huge advantage to the company. It will lead to better music recommendations for listeners, a better radio service, and most likely better ad targeting which is something Spotify has been struggling with since their US launch.

For the developing nerds out there, The Echo Nest will continue to keep its API free since the developer community is very crucial to both The Echo Nest and Spotify’s success thus far. What is a bit worrisome is The Echo Nest’s relationship with some of Spotify’s competitors i.e. eMusic, MOG, Vevo, Twitter Music, and Rdio. Spotify says that they are not cutting off The Echo Nest’s relationship with these companies but that they will keep a close eye on them. It sounds a bit up in the air right now, but Spotify believes that sharing a bit of The Echo Nest’s knowledge with their competitors is more beneficial than cutting them out of the picture all together.