Rhapsody International has recently acquired two companies that could help it build is music services in additional areas. It was announced that the company acquired Schematic Labs, the team behind SoundTracking, and Exfm for undisclosed amounts. Each company was picked up for a different reason, one team to bolster music discovery, while the other expands upon sharing.
Schematic Labs posted on the SoundTracking blog, announcing that the team and the app would be joining Rhapsody. The app, which is a sharing program that works in a similar vein as Instagram, will remain operational. Joining Rhapsody solves a problem for the SoundTracking app, which faced problems of not having enough music rights in place for growth. However, it will gain access to Rhapsody’s catalog of 30 million songs.
“We started SoundTracking with the simple goal of allowing people to express themselves through music,” said Schematic Labs. “We’ve 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.”
Exfm brings a different type of music discovery to Rhapsody, using a method that scans Internet traffic to make recommendations based on the music played from various sources. Exfm started out as a service that scanned sites for MP3s, which would then be uploaded to a cloud player. Later, apps and an API would be distributed. The service ran into some problems earlier in the year when it had to shut down its apps because of financial and legal problems.
Exfm doesn’t say exactly what it will be doing, but it does add in the front page statement that the team will have access to Rhapsody’s music catalog as well.
“For the next few months, we will be heads down working,” said Exfm. “When we resurface, we are sure you will love what we have built. We’ve got some pretty amazing plans for iPhone, Android, Windows Phone and the Web.”
Rhapsody also confirmed the acquisitions with TechCrunch. Chief Product Office Paul Springer stated that the company is excited to bring in the expertise that each company brings including the music expression from SoundTracking and the design and technology from Exfm.
