The Echo Nest and Rdio Announce Groundbreaking Partnership

SOMERVILLE, Mass., May 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The Echo Nest, a music intelligence platform powering smarter music apps across the web and devices, announced a partnership with Rdio (www.rdio.com), the unlimited, on demand social music service from the founders of Skype on Tuesday, to help developers build music apps on a catalog of more than eight million licensed songs while tapping a new source of revenue. The first of these applications, Music Maze (www.musicmaze.fm), is a steerable music streaming service that traces similarities between millions of artists after the listener starts with a single suggestion.

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Integration between Rdio's comprehensive licensed music catalog and The Echo Nest's deep musical intelligence will allow app developers to build sophisticated mobile and web applications with access to licensed music and the ability to categorize, filter, analyze, understand, and manipulate that music in the countless ways enabled by The Echo Nest's API. The only limit to what a music app developer can build from this tool set is their imagination.

The partnership is designed to inspire music app innovation by exposing Rdio's API to The Echo Nest's growing army of independent developers, which will ultimately give fans more exciting and diverse online music experiences. Application developers hold the keys to the music industry's ongoing reinvention, but without such partnerships, they can't access the licensed content or technological resources they need. This partnership delivers both elements, with behind-the-scenes integration at the API level so that it all "just works" without requiring developers to reinvent wheels.

"This partnership with Rdio brings together unique strengths: Rdio's extensive music catalog and user base with The Echo Nest's rich music data and developer platform. Together, we're giving developers everything they need to build engaging, commercially-successful music applications," said Jim Lucchese, CEO of The Echo Nest. "Music Maze sets a high standard for the types of music apps that will emerge from this partnership. I can't wait to see what happens when our community of over 7,000 developers get their hands on this offering."

"Through our relationship with The Echo Nest, we've just made it super easy for developers to legally access Rdio's music catalog and build applications for the Rdio service," said Todd Berman, VP of Engineering at Rdio. "Eight-million-plus songs and a growing community of social music fans are a fantastic platform for innovation, and we're expecting the entire web 2.0 ecosystem will benefit as a result."

When a non-subscriber uses these resulting music apps, he or she can enjoy 30-second clips of each Rdio track. Or, by subscribing to Rdio, they can hear all of Rdio's eight-million-plus tracks in full within the apps, which can offer a wide range of features: music discovery, gaming, social networking, location tagging, playlist sharing, or whatever else developers can conceive.

In addition, app developers will gain a new source of revenue when they participate in the program. Rdio's LinkShare affiliate program lets developers who attract new subscribers to Rdio earn two to three percent of resulting subscription fees for as long as that person subscribes, or seven percent of each a la carte song purchase. Both options offer developers with the right ideas a significant upside in addition to revenue from app purchases.

About The Echo Nest

The Echo Nest is a music intelligence company that connects the greatest application developers to the best data and music to enable the next generation of music experiences. Powered by the world's only machine learning system that actively reads about and listens to music everywhere on the web, The Echo Nest opens up a massive repository of dynamic music data to application developers ranging from one-person operations to multinational corporations. Over 100 music applications have been built on its platform to date.

The Echo Nest was co-founded by two MIT Media Lab PhDs. Winner of three National Science Foundation SBIR grants, The Echo Nest's investors include Matrix Partners and Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Argos Management and three co-founders of MIT Media Lab. For more information, visit the.echonest.com.

About Rdio

Rdio is an unlimited, on-demand social music service that brings music alive by letting subscribers listen to as many songs as they want, anytime, anywhere, and discover and share new music with friends. Rdio subscribers build and share their online music collections from a catalogue of over 8 million songs and can check out the listening activity, collections and playlists of other users and influencers as well as see what's in heavy rotation in their network, top charts, and newly released albums. Subscribers can access their Rdio on a variety of platforms including web, Mac or PC desktop client, mobile devices such as iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile 7, and in-home devices like Sonos and Roku. Rdio was founded by Janus Friis, one of the founders of Skype and is funded by Atomico, Janus Friis through his investment entities, Mangrove Capital Partners and Skype. For more information please visit www.rdio.com.

SOURCE The Echo Nest Corporation