This morning, subscription streaming music service Rdio announced a new partnership with music analytics and recommendation service Echo Nest. The partnership will allow developers to add music recommendations from Echo Nest to their apps and then actually play the music using streams from Rdio. Non-subscribers to Rdio will hear 30 second previews and those of us (like myself) who are Rdio subscribers will be able to listen to the full songs.
Echo Nest is a music developers’ platform that analyzes music in various ways, including BPM, mood, similar and dissimilar artist permutations and 29 others. The company offers a gallery of apps built on its system. The Rdio API was unveiled early this Spring and includes an affiliate program for subscription sales. Will developers want to build music apps that require subscription to a 3rd party service? That remains to be seen, but adding Echo Nest capabilities to the total offering certainly makes it stronger.
