Spotify acquires 4th company in past 3 months – and looks set to buy more

Spotify is splashing the cash in a bid to stay ahead of the competition.
Daniel Ek’s company has just announced its fourth acquisition of 2017 so far: French artificial intelligence startup Niland.
In a statement, Spotify said that the Paris-based company had already “changed the game for how AI technology can optimize music search and recommendation capabilities… [and] shares Spotify’s passion for surfacing the right content to the right user at the right time”.
You can expect Niland’s machine learning tools to further boost Spotify’s music discovery offering, which remains rooted in The Echo Nest – itself acquired for just under $60m in May 2015.
The Niland team will join Spotify’s research and development (R&D) division in New York as part of the buyout.
Spotify added that Niland would “help [us] continue innovating and improving our recommendation and personalization technologies”.

Guest post by Tim Ingham, read more on Music Business Worldwide.