The Echo Nest Disrupts Music Identification with Open-Source 'Echoprint'

SOMERVILLE, Mass. and NEW YORK, June 23, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The Echo Nest, a music intelligence company powering smarter music applications for leading media companies and thousands of independent developers, has released the world's first fully open-source music fingerprint service to include everything developers need to help music fans identify songs on the go: Echoprint. The Echo Nest is partnering with 7digital to launch with a resolvable catalog of 14 million songs, an amount that will continue to grow with other partners and with the help of the community.

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With Echoprint, any app developer can help music fans identify the music is playing around them, for free. Once a highly-proprietary technology, music identification now belongs to the community at large.

Music identification apps regularly rank among the most popular paid offerings in the iTunes, Android, and other app stores. Every music fan wants to identify the songs they hear, read up on the artists who made them, and tag them for future listening or purchase. They also want everything their personal music collections to be properly labeled. Thanks to the open-source Echoprint, music fans will get both of these things within a much wider variety of apps.

Echoprint is a fully open-source, end-to-end music fingerprinter with its own large reference catalog. Unlike expensive, proprietary alternatives, the open-source Echoprint will improve as developers and the users of those developer's apps expose it to new music. The Echo Nest's partners have been using Echoprint for 18 months already, and as open-source software, it will revolutionize music apps of all kinds.

"Music fingerprinting should belong to the Internet," said Brian Whitman, co-founder and CTO of The Echo Nest. "It should be a service that every developer can rely on without worrying about licensing fees or complicated database implementations. The Echo Nest is uniquely positioned to open its best-in-class fingerprinting technology and music resolution data to the public. Any music experience, from a streaming cloud service to a social music game can now immediately include music recognition. We're giving people the client and server along with the data, and we can't wait to see what they build with this."

"Through the many partnerships that run on the 7digital platform, we have learned that consumers have no problem paying for music if the experience is simple and convenient.  When music fans hear something they love, they want to know what it is and make an easy purchase of that track or album. Echoprint and 7digital combined gives developers the tools to identify music from any source and then provide an easy way for users to buy that music.  This open-source option will help companies to help solve the problem of accurate song identification," said Ben Drury, CEO of 7digital. "7digital's catalog has been a part of The Echo Nest's API suite since last fall, and Echoprint is a great extension of that relationship. We both believe that adding new tools for application developers promotes more creative music services and better options for consumers."

The Echo Nest expects a proliferation of music apps to spring from the open-source Echoprint -- not just for identifying music, but also for building social networks, location services, and other technologies on the knowledge about what song is playing. The Echo Nest is pleased to offer this technology for app developers and, by extension, music fans everywhere, who will soon find it much easier to learn about the music playing around them. And thanks to a partnership with the open music encyclopedia MusicBrainz, dozens of existing music resolving apps will shortly become Echoprint-aware.

"I'm excited to see The Echo Nest and MusicBrainz join forces to bring the first fully open source fingerprinting solution to market.  This cooperation combines advanced music technology and applies crowd source principles to create the best fingerprinting solution today." says MusicBrainz Founder, Robert Kaye.

For access to The Echo Nest's open-source Echoprint music fingerprinter, developers can follow links from echoprint.me.

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 the largest media companies in the world. Over 200 music applications have been built on its platform to date. The Echo Nest's customers reach over 100,000,000 music fans.

The Echo Nest was co-founded by two MIT Media Lab PhDs. Winner of four 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 7digital

Established in 2004, 7digital.com is a leading, globally operating digital media delivery company based in London. Through 7digital's download store (www.7digital.com) and mobile applications consumers can access over 14 million legal high quality MP3 music tracks, as well as audiobooks and videos, at competitive prices across Europe and North America.

Combining 7digital's secure and robust technology platform with the broadest agreements in the digital media industry, the company provides comprehensive digital download services to a wide range of partners around the world. 7digital has worked with record companies, artists, FMCG brands, retailers, consumer electronics companies, fashion brands, advertising agencies and many other organisations to harness the power of digital entertainment – music, video, audiobooks and ebooks – to engage customers.

The 7digital API (Application Programming Interface) allows developers to use and license the 7digital technology platform with over 14 million tracks to create new music websites, applications and devices or to integrate music into existing services.

7digital has provided digital media services to hundreds of international partners including, RIM, Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, Ubuntu,  Shazam, Last.fm, Winamp, Songbird, HMV, Waterstone's, Pernod Ricard, Nestle, Arcadia Group, Adidas, Procter and Gamble, Universal Music, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music.

For more information visit www.7digital.com/business.

SOURCE The Echo Nest