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Spotify acquires live event content aggregator CrowdAlbum for an undisclosed price
Music streaming provider Spotify AB has acquired live event content aggregator CrowdAlbum, Inc. for an undisclosed price.
Founded in 2013 by Tracy Chan, the former head of data and analytics for YouTube (Google, Inc.), CrowdAlbum creates albums of live events based on the location and time of photos and videos people share on social media sites.
The service can index content for any kind of event, but mostly aggregates photos from music concerts and festivals, hence the appeal for Spotify.
For musicians, the albums created by CrowdAlbum are said to give artists a visual history of their tours while also helping them identify and connect with their most passionate fans; over 1,000 artists and venue partners are said to be signed up to the site for that very purpose.
“We’re working every day to find ways to tighten the connection between artists and their fans,” Spotify Vice President of Product Charlie Hellman said in a statement. “The CrowdAlbum acquisition is the latest way Spotify is investing in helping artists find and engage their audiences on and off Spotify, especially around the ever important business of touring.”
Tooling up
Spotify’s acquisition of CrowdAlbum follows its previous acquisitions of Cord Project and Soundwave and is part of an ongoing push by the company to tool up in terms of bringing not only additional features for its users but for artists as well.
It’s a value add for any music streaming service that says they care about helping artists using their service, while also giving an incentive for artists not currently signed up for each respective service to do so; in Spotify’s case the company is unfairly accused of not being just in its dealings with artists, whereas the addition of a service such as CrowdAlbum is one way of Spotify proving critics wrong.
Prior to acquisition, CrowdAlbum had raised one seed round of $100,000 from Social Starts.
Spotify did not say whether the service would remain available as a standalone product, saying only that “CrowdAlbum will join a team at Spotify focused on building products for artists.”
Image credit: CrowdAlbum/ screenshot.
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