Spotify has acquired another music tech business.
The streaming company has bought San Francisco-based Loudr for an undisclosed fee.
Loudr, which was founded in 2013, creates products and services that ‘help content creators, aggregators, and music services identify rights holders, secure mechanical licenses, and pay royalties to music publishers’.
It does so via proprietary technology that automatically processes publishing metadata, and then matches sound recordings to compositions on behalf of publishers and songwriters.
The clearance of mechanical licenses in the US, of course, has been a controversial area for Spotify to date – and is at the crux of the $1.6bn lawsuit it’s currently facing from Wixen.
MBW revealed last year that Spotify spent over $120m on acquisitions in the three years to mid-2017.
One of those acquisitions was very much in Loudr’s wheelhouse: Sonalytic, which Spotify bought in March last year, built tech which it said could “identify individual songs, mixed content and short audio clips with unparalleled robustness and speed”.
Until now, Loudr has typically worked with digital aggregators like CD Baby, SoundDrop and Zebralution – but now it’s bringing its tools to Spotify.
“WHAT LOUDR HAS BUILT IS MORE THAN JUST A SMART AND EASY WAY FOR ARTISTS TO OBTAIN MECHANICAL LICENSES; IT’S TRUE MUSIC INDUSTRY INNOVATION.”
ADAM PARNESS, SPOTIFY
The Loudr team of publishing specialists and technologists will join Spotify’s New York offices as part of the acquisition.
In a statement, Spotify said: ‘Loudr will continue to provide services to its publishing and aggregator partners, while contributing to Spotify’s continued efforts towards a more transparent and efficient music publishing industry for songwriters and rights holders.’
“What Loudr has built is more than just a smart and easy way for artists to obtain mechanical licenses; it’s true music industry innovation,” said Adam Parness, Global Head of Publishing, Spotify.
“The Loudr team perfectly complements Spotify’s music publishing operation and, together, we believe we can continue to foster a more open, streamlined, and modern music publishing landscape.”
Originally posted on MUSICBUSINESSWORLDWIDE.COM
