Yahoo Finance Apple swallows up music analytics firm Asaii to help spot emerging talent
Apple has swallowed up a music analytics company which claims to be able to "find the next Justin Bieber before anyone else", in a tie-up that could help it compete more effectively with music streaming services like Spotify.
In its second music-focused move in under a year, Apple is understood to have hired a number of senior people from Asaii, a startup which lets managers and labels "discover, track, and manage talent using machine learning", pulling data from music services and social media.
The company's technology ranks artists and tracks across multiple streaming platforms and uses algorithms to detect which are likely to top the charts in the months ahead.
"Our machine learning powered algorithms finds artists 10 weeks before they chart," Asaii claimed.
Apple has been focusing on expanding its music business in recent months. Apple's subscription music service had 50 million active users in May, though the company hasn't updated the figures since. Spotify has 83 million paying subscribers and 100 million unpaid users.
The move to bring on board a number of new employees comes just one month after Apple completed its purchase of Shazam, a company which allows people to identify music using their smartphones, in a $400m deal which many European states had warned would affect competition.
The European Commission cleared the Shazam deal last month, saying it would not hurt rivals in the digital streaming market such as Spotify.
Although that merger did "not have an EU dimension", with Shazam a UK company and Apple US-based, the Commission has the right to assess any deal which would affect trade within the single market.
Apple's latest deal, to essentially absorb Asaii, will be seen as a further effort by the smartphone maker to catch up with its rival Spotify.
Speculation around a takeover of Asaii emerged last month after the company abruptly announced it was shutting down its services, and reports on Monday appeared to suggest Apple had bought the company. However, The Daily Telegraph understands the deal was not officially an acquisition.
Apple declined to comment on or confirm the deal, and also did not issue a statement which it typically does to affirm such tie-ups.
While Apple Music is growing rapidly, it still lags behind the Swedish company for paid user numbers, with Spotify's figure almost double that of Apple Music.
Spotify has recently been expanding its service further, to include more independent artists, allowing them to directly upload their music to the streaming service without having to go through a third party service.
