Digital

EMI and Echo Nest announce ambitious app developer network

By | Published on Friday 4 November 2011

EMI

EMI has announced an interesting alliance with The Echo Nest, that digital company that launched an open-source Shazam-style music recognition platform earlier this year, and which also provides some data services to digital music providers like MOG and iHeartRadio.

Under the new partnership, Echo Nest will operate a network for developers called OpenEMI giving them access to some of the major’s content to play with when creating possible music apps. Signed-up developers will be able to access content from new artists which EMI are actively looking to create apps for, plus some catalogue content, including almost all of the Blue Note label’s archives. The major will take proposals for apps via the network and, if approved, will handle the licensing side of things and provide marketing support

Assuming apps have a fruitful future as a revenue generator as well as a give-away marketing tool, and assuming this partnership can survive any change of ownership of EMI, it is potentially significant – making it much easier for developers to consider making music-based apps without facing impossible licensing hurdles, and benefiting EMI in that innovative app makers will be focusing their creative energy on products involving their recordings.

Says EMI VP Strategy & Insight Jim Brady: “We’re very excited about the potential of working together with The Echo Nest and their network to develop great applications for our artists. We’ve looked at how best we can improve the process of creating new music applications and the OpenEMI sandbox we have built together as a result is a fantastic resource for tapping the passion and innovation of the best developers in the world”.

Echo Nest boss Jim Lucchese added: “Application developers are the future of the music business – they are the creative architects reshaping the role music plays in our lives. We surveyed our community of 10,000 application developers to understand their biggest challenges in building commercial music applications. Music licensing difficulties were the number one problem developers faced, with assistance in marketing applications coming in at number two.  By taking on responsibilities around licensing and putting EMI’s marketing muscle behind these applications, OpenEMI is directly addressing these pain points and fostering a more collaborative environment between the established music industry and its future”.

The new developer network will be unveiled this weekend.



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