Spotify has bought WhoSampled to expand music data
Spotify has announced that it has acquired WhoSampled, a service which reveals information about the origins of musical components.
The company will use data from the WhoSampled community to power a new SongDNA feature. Available to paying subscribers, the feature provides a wealth of information about tracks including the source of samples used within songs.
In a blog post about being acquired, WhoSampled says: “We are thrilled to announce that WhoSampled has been acquired by Spotify and is now part of the Spotify family! This marks an exciting new chapter in our journey - one where WhoSampled will not only continue to grow and improve, but also bring its unique flavor of music discovery to the world’s largest music streaming platform, used and loved by hundreds of millions of fans”.
The company continues:
Through our recent discussions with Spotify, it became clear that we share a strong belief in the power of musical context - and a vision for helping listeners go deeper into the songs they love. Spotify has shown a genuine commitment to our mission, and we couldn’t have found a better home for WhoSampled.
Importantly, the WhoSampled you know and love is here to stay as a standalone platform and brand. It will continue to operate much as it always has, powered by the passion of our incredible community of contributors around the world, and supported by multiple streaming integrations.
Our mission to build the world’s greatest database of Music DNA remains unchanged - but now, we’ll have the resources to make it even bigger and better for everyone. Starting today, we’re rolling out several improvements to your experience:
- Faster moderation: waiting times for submissions will drop dramatically.
- Free apps with full functionality: our iOS app is joining Android in becoming free to download, and in-app subscriptions on both platforms will soon be free for all users.
- No more display ads: in the coming weeks, the site will go ad-free, resulting in a cleaner, faster WhoSampled experience for everyone.
This is just the beginning. We’ll keep improving the WhoSampled experience and building exciting new features together with Spotify. We’re already working on innovative ways to explore music connections directly within Spotify, starting with SongDNA - an upcoming feature that will bring WhoSampled’s magic to hundreds of millions of listeners worldwide.
In its own blog post about new features to its platform, Spotify says of SongDNA:
Song Credits are just the start. We’ll also be rolling out SongDNA, an interactive view that maps out connections between songs, showing collaborators, samples, and covers all in one place. Spotify Premium listeners will see it in the ‘Now Playing’ view as a new way to explore, dig deeper into how tracks are connected, and trace a song’s creative roots. Samples and covers in SongDNA are powered by WhoSampled, which is now part of Spotify. With WhoSampled’s community-built knowledge, fans can dive into the influences behind the music they love, while giving sampled and covered artists fresh ways to get discovered and celebrated.
More information about SongDNA is available here.