Rhapsody Picks Up Music Startups SoundTracking and Exfm

rhapsody devicesMusic streaming service Rhapsody has acquired two music-related startups; music discovery service Exfm and Schematic Labs, the parent team behind social music app SoundTracking.

The acquisitions provide the 14-year old streaming service with new tools and features that can aid the company in growing beyond its current 2m strong pool of subscribers.

Exfm tracks users web traffic to monitor what songs they play across various sites, and uses that data to bring songs and artists they may enjoy to their attention. This cross-site tracking sets it apart from similar taste-monitoring services like Beats Music and Last.fm.

In a post on its website, Exfm wrote: “For the last four years, weve been committed to building an original, fast and fun way to discover new music. Rhapsody has been a leader in the on-demand music space since they pioneered the concept over 10 years ago. By teaming up, we can build the ultimate music service with an amazing social discovery engine backed by Rhapsodys catalog of over 30m songs.”

With the acquisition of the Schematic Labs team and the SoundTracking app, Rhapsody brings the Instagram-like music sharing service under its umbrella, while SoundTracking, which will continue to operate as normal, gets access to Rhapsodys extensive song library.

The Schematic Labs team made a blog post regarding the acquisition, writing: “We started SoundTracking with the simple goal of allowing people to express themselves through music. Weve accomplished that and more, and now as part of Rhapsody, we are in an even better position to scale and innovate to a broader global audience.”