Apple Buys UK Startup Behind Musicmetric to Add Analytics to Beats | Hacker News Reader

Apple Buys UK Startup Behind Musicmetric to Add Analytics to Beats

techcrunch.com

15 pointsrivella9 comments

Apple has a reasonable track record with selective acquisitions like this, but they bought App search company Chomp* back in 2012. Over 2 years later the App Store search and navigation system is still painfully bad, so I'll believe this will make a difference when I see it.

* http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-acquires-app-sear...

They did actually integrate Chomp into the App Store. Just turned out everyone hated it.

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/08/30/apple-adds-chomp-styled-...

Chomp was much more than the results interface though. There were filters and suggested alternatives to make your queries more specific. The closes the official App Store has come to this is the Trending Apps section in iOS 8, which still doesn't help me find apps I'm specifically looking for but don't come up in the first half dozen results of a search.

Good idea considering Spotify has a deal in place with Next Big Sound (although it also gives stats on how your social media accounts are performing).

I'm still not sold on this whole Beats acquisition. It seems like a mid-1990s Microsoft play.

>> "I'm still not sold on this whole Beats acquisition."

Why not? They need a streaming service (iTunes Radio isn't good enough) and Beats is IMO the best one out there. Plus if the streaming service doesn't work out they're still covered as they've purchased an incredibly successful hardware company and brand. They'll make the acquisition cost back in sales pretty quickly.

Beats is alright, but the user experience is absolutely awful. Music is poorly organized. The sentence thing in the app is kind of a gimmick. It's great if you're fine with just turning on some sort of music that's somewhat similar to what you're wanting to listen to, and then forgetting about it. If you want to amass a collection of specific songs you like, spotify is the way to go. Beats' web interface is terrible. I logged in with Twitter, and I had to login every single time I went to the site. I tried it for a month, and I missed having the desktop application that spotify offers.

Beats web app definitely sucks, I agree with that. However the iOS app is fantastic. Music is organized much better than Spotify. You can search for an artist then easily browse by Albums, Singles, EP's, Songs. You can save to your library (something Spotify only introduced recently) or a playlist. The sentence thing is a gimmick but the homepage in the app always recommends me great stuff I haven't heard or haven't listened to in a while. The highlights section also regularly turns up good stuff for me. This is where Spotify lacks in my opinion. I was browsing through some playlists today and they're exactly the same ones they were recommending to me a year ago. I've also never found a playlist I truly enjoy on Spotify whereas on Beats I've got dozens saved. I'm guessing this is due to the fact that people with taste in music curate the Beats playlists.

NB: I use both Spotify, Beats, and iTunes. I purchase music I love in iTunes, use Beats for discovery or when I just want to listen to music and do nothing else. Spotify I use when I have something specific in mind or want something playing in the background.

I wondered when this news would break. Congrats to everyone at Semetric :)

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