Apple buys streaming analytics firm Asaii to bolster Apple Music recommendations, report says

According to an unconfirmed report published Sunday, Apple recently purchased music analytics startup Asaii in an effort to further refine Apple Music recommendations and better integrate with up-and-coming artists.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, Axios reports Apple paid less than $100 million for Asaii. Apple has yet to confirm the deal, though the LinkedIn profiles of Asaii's three co-founders now list the executives at Apple Music.

Founded in 2016, Asaii applied machine learning to the aggregation and analysis of streaming music. Using song playcount and associated data from Apple Music, Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, Spotify and Twitter, the firm's technology scoured the internet to deliver new and popular tracks to industry insiders. Like other analytics solutions, Asaii distilled and presented discovered information in an easy-to-use analytics dashboard.

According to the company's website, which is still active as of this writing, the analytics engine leveraged real-time song data to assign an "Assai Score," surfacing hot new artists for A&R executives. Separate products provided a newsfeed for contextualizing social media reach and a tracking module for artist management.

Asaii also marketed Asaii Recommend, an API for streaming services that powered user recommendations, generated algorithmically created playlists and more.

Asaii CEO and co-founder Sony Theakanath and co-founders Austin Chen and Chris Zhang all took positions at Apple in October.

Prior to creating the streaming analytics startup, Theakanath was a software engineer on Apple's Special Projects Team from May 2015 to August 2016, concentrating on Core OS and iAd. Chen also worked at Apple, serving as a global operations manager for four months in 2016.

The Asaii acquisition is expected to bolster Apple Music recommendations and track discovery for end users. Sources said Apple is also looking to compete with Spotify's RISE emerging artist initiative, which leverages the streaming music platform's size to promote up-and-coming musicians.

Apple's reported Asaii acquisition follows its purchase of song identification platform Shazam in December.

10 Comments

baconstang 1154 comments · 10 Years

About 6 years ago

I hope this will help.
My experience with streaming services (Pandora, Spotify, Apple Radio) have been dismal.
Skip 20 songs before they play something marginally listenable.

Rayz2016 6957 comments · 8 Years

baconstang said:

I hope this will help.
My experience with streaming services (Pandora, Spotify, Apple Radio) have been dismal.
Skip 20 songs before they play something marginally listenable.

My experience with Apple Music is the exact opposite. It rarely suggests artists I like, but it does seem to suggest lots of new stuff that I think, 'Oh yeah, that's pretty good; a bit like so-and-so'. I imagine streaming services in general it finds it easier to work with people who have a wide range of musical tastes.

They have a nice line of chill mixes, but I don't like much of the pop stuff, but I don't think there's anything they can really do about that.

entropys 4302 comments · 13 Years

For some reason Apple Music is convinced, despite all evidence to the contrary, that I have an interest in hip hop. I am quite sure that this fancy schamsy algorithm will discover for Apple Music, apparently the next Stock, Aitken and Waterman factory, that the world demands Hip Hop too.

matrix077 868 comments · 9 Years

I like this. It seems Apple Music team has moved very aggressively. It’ll only benefit all AM subscribers out there.

i only hope Siri team will be this aggressive because we need them to.

franklinjackcon 612 comments · 10 Years

baconstang said:

I hope this will help.
My experience with streaming services (Pandora, Spotify, Apple Radio) have been dismal.
Skip 20 songs before they play something marginally listenable.

That's fairly surprising. Are you adding songs to your library? With Spotify I found that it wasn't doing a great job just based on my listening habits but once I started adding songs I liked, every week my Discover Weekly playlist is turning up plenty of interesting artists I didn't know about.