Nothing beats a good music discovery app. As Apple’s App Store creeps closer to 50 billion apps downloaded altogether, Pandora remains the second most downloaded free app of all time (after Facebook). Now, one of its fiercest competitors—Spotify—is beefing up its own music discovery game with the acquisition of Tunigo.
A spokesperson for Spotify said that Tunigo has been a long-time partner of Spotify and has had a top 10 app on Spotify since the launch of its platform.
“The acquisition fits into our overall strategy around music discovery…basically helping our users make sense of over 20 million tracks,” the spokesperson said, adding that the Tunigo app will remain on Spotify.
The financial terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, but all 20 of Tunigo’s employees will be reporting to Spotify’s offices in Stockholm and New York, according to AllThingsD.
Tunigo previously partnered with Spotify back in 2011 when Spotify opened up its platform to third party developers. The music discovery service allows users to subscribe to playlists according to mood, occasion, and so on. For example, mood playlists include angry, melancholic, psyched, happy, relaxed, and so on. There are also playlists for parties (dinner parties, theme parties, after parties, etc.), playlists for working out (running, at the gym), playlists for the club (house, techno, trance, etc.), and more.
Tunigo could be reached for comment, so it’s not clear how many users the service has and what kind of user base the company is bringing to Spotify.
Spotify launched in eight new markets last month, including Mexico, Hong Kong, Singapore, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Iceland, bringing the platform’s total to 28 markets altogether. The company has more than 24 million active users and over six million paid subscribers. Since its launch in 2008, Spotify says it’s driven more than $500 million to rights holders and expects to drive another $500 million in 2013.
Spotify and Pandora alike might have more to worry about soon, as Apple’s iRadio is reportedly progressing. Apple is expected to sign its first licensing agreement with Universal Music Group as early as next week. Along with Universal Music Group, Warner Music is also expected to sign with Apple. The service is expected to be similar to Pandora, with some slight differences, such as more on-demand features, which could make it competitive with not just Pandora, but Spotify and Rdio as well.
