Apple snaps up music analytics startup as part of possible Beats revamp

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The new analytics dashboard for Beats Music? Photo: Musicmetric
The new analytics dashboard for Beats Music? Photo: Musicmetric

Although we’ve heard vague reports about it, all’s been quiet on the Cupertino front about Apple’s plans to relaunch its Beats Music streaming service later this year — possibly as early as February.

Today another piece of the puzzle may have fallen into place, however, with the news that Apple has acquired U.K. startup Semetric, which runs the Musicmetric analytics tool, designed to allow music labels to track sales, BitTorrent, YouTube, Spotify and social-networking data for their artists.

Apple hasn’t made clear what the service will be used for, save for its usual, “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plan” statement.

What makes sense, though, is for Musicmetric to become Apple’s in-house tool for its revamped music service. If this turns out to be the case, it’s not known whether the tool will continue to integrate Spotify or YouTube data, given that both companies are — at least to some degree — rivals to Apple’s product.

Coupled with the news that Beats Music will be built into iOS this year, and that Apple is aiming for $5 monthly subscriptions, today’s news makes the revamp of Apple’s music service even more exciting.

Particularly if you work on the business end of the music industry.

Source: The Guardian

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