Spotify expands credits and acquires WhoSampled

[Teletubby 153,382]

Spotify is expanding the Song Credits to highlight all of the contributors who make each song possible, from producers and engineers to songwriters and featured artists. (Previously, our Song Credits only featured topline performance, songwriting, and production credits.) The rollout will start on mobile and continue to desktop over the coming months. These credits come directly from labels and artist distributors, so keeping them up to date through your label or distributor is the best way to make sure everyone is recognized.

They’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.

Spotify has acquired the community-run database tracking sampled music, WhoSampled, the company announced Wednesday. Deal terms were not disclosed, but Spotify confirmed to TechCrunch the acfeatures.quisition is for both the WhoSampled team and database. (The company had only a handful of employees, per data on PitchBook and LinkedIn, which both confirm around 10 staffers.) Launched in 2008, London-based WhoSampled offers an extensive database of songs, samples, covers, remixes, artists, and more. According to its website, it’s now tracking more than 1.2 million songs and nearly 622,000 samples. That data is powering Spotify’s latest features, like its upcoming music discovery tool SongDNA, also announced on Wednesday. source

[AndieDarko 8]

I should definitely read more into this, but this seems incredibly amazing. Transparency and visible crediting is so important and so ****ing cool at that. Love love love this....I think haha. 

[elsamars 3,965]

I am praying for the day Spotify dies. Everything has an end. It will end too like other platforms. Streaming era will be over and we will neuroregister songs.