eMusic to launch Echo Nest-powered smart music discovery apps

The Echo Nest is a ‘music intelligence’ company that offers products to help developers and media companies integrate rich music data across their products.

Back in June, we covered The Echo Nest’s partnership with 7digital and MusicBrainz which saw the launch of Echoprint, which essentially is an open source version of Shazam. And today, the company has announced another new partnership, this time with eMusic, a digital music service for independent music collectors.

The partnership will combine The Echo Nest’s music data platform and eMusic’s editorial to roll out a series of music discovery applications.

The first product will be eMusic Radio, which is launching in beta with dozens of curated radio programs based on emerging artists, local music scenes, and more. Programs are curated by eMusic’s editorial staff and music writers, as well as other influencers from across the music industry.

eMusic program curators will now be able to use The Echo Nest’s Playlist and Taste Profiling engine to both create and enhance eMusic Radio programs, based on artist connections, song similarity, mood, style and acoustic attributes, such as tempo, energy, danceability, time signature, and key.

Over 200 music applications have been built on The Echo Nest platform to date, and it claims to reach over 100m music fans every month. Jim Lucchese, CEO of The Echo Nest, said:

“eMusic has always been about more than just access to music – it’s long been a trusted source of musical insight and discovery. This partnership gives us the freedom to work with eMusic on a series of applications aimed at giving the most serious fans new ways to broaden and deepen their musical understanding.”

This is the first in a series of new features that will combine eMusic’s editorial and The Echo Nest platform. Forthcoming applications will complement other discovery features, such as the album and artist reviews available on eMusic. Richard Caccappolo, CTO of eMusic, said:

“By combining The Echo Nest’s best-in-class music intelligence platform and our distinguished editorial, we’re able to offer a more sophisticated music discovery experience for our members that centers on listening. The Echo Nest has helped expand upon our team’s music knowledge base by providing track suggestions within a musical theme. Essentially, we’ve created the audio cure for writer’s block.”

eMusic allows people to sign-up for a monthly subscription, giving them access to search, download and even own music. Users can also buy and download audio books from all the major publishers. Headquartered in New York, with an office in London, eMusic is available in the US, Canada, the EU, Norway and Switzerland.

eMusic Radio is now available in beta for US eMusic members only.