Spotify Playlist News: Company Purchased Analytics Startup, But the Reason Why Is Unclear

Spotify announced that it purchased the U.K. music startup Sonalytic on Tuesday. But it’s unclear what Spotify plans to do with the new addition.

“Their advancements in audio feature detection will be used in several ways to advance Spotify’s mission: from improving Spotify’s personalized playlists to matching songs with compositions to improve our publishing data system,” said a brief news release from Spotify.

Sonalytic’s website outlines all of the services they offer, identification, monitoring and discovery. The discover portion highlights the creation of perfect playlists based on users likes and dislikes, something Spotify could get better at.

Pandora uses this type of technology to personalize stations, but Spotify doesn’t rely on it as much. This acquisition may be the first step towards better personalized playlists that aren’t created by the listener. Spotify took its first steps towards this when it introduced “Discover Weekly” and “Daily Mix” playlists.

The services Sonalytic offers may be used on the production end instead. It may be opened up to artists rather than listeners. Artists could use the analytics to their advantage to gather more information about listeners and their listening habits.

Either way, Spotify wrote, “Stay tuned for new products we’ll bring to market with Sonalytic’s help.”