spotify type subsidiary industry music founded june 2005 2005 06 1 founder tristan jehan and brian whitman headquarters somerville ma united states key people tristan jehan co founder & cto brian whitman co founder & cto jim lucchese ceo 2 products music intelligence platform owner spotify number of employees 65 1 website the.echonest.com the echo nest is a music intelligence and data platform for developers and media companies . based in somerville ma the echo nest was a research spin off from the mit media lab to understand the audio and textual content of recorded music . 3 its creators intended it to perform music identification recommendation playlist creation audio fingerprinting and analysis for consumers and developers . 4 on march 6 2014 spotify announced that they had acquired the echo nest . 5 contents 1 history 2 products 3 clients 4 spotify 5 see also 6 references 7 external links history edit the echo nest was founded in 2005 from the dissertation work of tristan jehan 6 and brian whitman 7 at the mit media lab . in october 2010 the echo nest received a 7 million venture financing from matrix partners and commonwealth capital ventures . 4 8 in july 2012 the echo nest received a 17.3 million series d venture financing from norwest venture partners matrix partners commonwealth capital ventures and jim pallotta . 1 in march 2014 the echo nest was acquired by spotify for an undisclosed amount . 9 products edit the echo nest s product line was based on their automatically derived database of data about 30 million songs 3 aggregated from web crawling data mining and digital signal processing techniques . the company also made its data available to developers via an api 10 used by over 7 000 developers 2 to build independent music applications . the api was shut down on may 31 2016 and developers was encouraged to use the spotify api instead . 11 the echo nest released data on 1 million songs for research purposes . 12 the company was a co organizer of music hack day . 13 in june 2011 the company released echoprint an open source and open data acoustic fingerprinting library . 14 clients edit the data powered music solutions for customers such as mtv 15 island def jam 16 bbc 17 mog warner music group emusic 18 spotify rdio clear channel vevo nokia and thumbplay . 2 spotify edit the echo nest was acquired on march 6 2014 by music streaming service spotify . the music intelligence agency functions to help spotify curate personalized music recommendations that are driven by algorithms . the echo nest is the driving force behind the playlists professionally curated on spotify . to generate individualized discover weekly playlists as well as recommend suggestions in the discover section of spotify s home page individualized for every subscriber the echo nest collects data on a user s listening habits and uses it to predict what music they will enjoy the most . 19 the echo nest has created taste profiles based on the listening patterns they notice about a user . taste profiles are an amalgamation of taste clusters of genres and subgenres . taste profiles and clusters are not publicly available for individual users to access but have been released to journalists and researchers . 20 one echo nest employee has created a categorical perception spectrum of genres and subgenres based on an algorithmically generated readability adjusted scatter plot of the musical genre space based on data tracked and analyzed for 1461 genres by spotify called every noise at once . 21 the echo nest has also created an internal tool for spotify and echo nest employees called the truffle pig which is spotify curates mood and occasion specific playlists . the truffle pig is a sonically advanced search engine that can be asked to search for songs based on adjectives or feelings . the search can also be redacted for particular qualities to produce higher levels of specificity . playlists curated by spotify are available for public access . they are created in part by the algorithms associated with the truffle pig and in part by the music experts employed by spotify . to create these playlists one of spotify s thirty two resident music experts will use the truffle pig search engine to find songs associated with a quality or theme . from the search results the employee can hand pick songs perfect for any playlist . these playlists include your favorite coffeehouse and tgif . 22 see also edit gracenote pandora raditaz spotify references edit a b c crunchbase 22 march 2011 . the echo nest . crunchbase . cite error invalid ref tag ; name crunchbase defined multiple times with different content see the help page . a b c the echo nest . about us the company . a b david zax 4 march 2011 . the echo nest makes pandora look like a transistor radio . fast company . a b boston globe 5 october 2010 . the echo nest secures 7m in financing . the boston globe . spotify 6 march 2014 . spotify acquires the echo nest . spotify . tristan jehan . tristan jehan . mit media lab . brian whitman . brian whitman . mit media lab . leena rao 5 october 2010 . the echo nest raises 7 million for music personalization platform . techcrunch . spotify acquires the echo nest . echo nest api overview . important api announcement march 29th 2016 matthew lasar 8 march 2011 . million song dataset take it it s free . ars technica . anthony bruno 1 april 2011 . q & a the echo nest ceo jim lucchese . billboard . stuart dredge 23 june 2011 . make your own shazam there s an api for that called echoprint . the guardian . london . sam gustin 14 december 2010 . mtv unveils new music discovery website . wired . brenna ehrlich 2 february 2011 . island def jam partners with the echo nest to create opportunities for developers . mashable . mini swamy 28 december 2010 . echo nest enables bbc to deliver unique musical content . tmcnet . paul sawers . emusic to launch echo nest powered smart music discovery apps . http fivethirtyeight.com features spotify knows me better than i know myself http www.techinsider.io inside spotify and the future of music streaming http everynoise.com engenremap.html http www.wired.com 2015 07 spotify perfect playlist external links edit the echo nest s website retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title the echo nest & oldid 730990089 categories digital audiomusic websitescompanies established in 2005companies based in massachusettssoftware companies based in massachusettsmit media labhidden categories pages with reference errorspages with duplicate reference namesuse dmy dates from june 2011 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 22 july 2016 at 05 20 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view