Spotify buys Irish music app Soundwave
Streaming giant Spotify announced that it plans to acquire two companies, Irish Soundwave and Cord Project. It says this will help it build a great music experience.
Neither company is disclosing the price being paid for the deal.
The acquisition will see Soundwave’s team of 10 employees join Spotify’s offices in Sweden and San Francisco.
In a blog post, the company’s founders expressed their gratitude to all the people who helped the company reach this milestone.
“But we’re even more excited about hitting our next milestone and the one after that again,” they said.
Soundwave allows users to share information about what music they are listening to, see what others are listening to and connect with each other through integration of social media accounts like Twitter and Facebook.
The start-up was founded in Dublin in 2012 by UCD engineering graduate Brendan O’Driscoll and computer science graduate Aidan Sliney.
They secured a place on the National Digital Research Centre Launchpad programme in early 2012 and were joined by Craig Wilson during their time on the accelerator.
The product launched in June 2013 on Android and iOS and registered 50,000 downloads on the first day.
Since then it has been downloaded 1.5 million times in 190 countries in 14 languages. Its database of songs has grown to 150 million. The product has received a number of accolades including being voted “Best Innovation in Music” by Apples’s App Store in 2013.
It is also listed as one of just 50 apps in the Editor’s Choice section of Google’s massive Play Store for its Android operating system.
In 2014, Brendan O’Driscoll and Aidan Sliney were shortlisted in the Emerging category at the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards.
The app has also had very public endorsements from celebrities including actor Stephen Fry and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
The takeover is likely to result in a windfall for the founders, as well as investors in the company, including ACT Venture Capital, serial tech investor Mark Cuban, SparkLabs Global and a number of private funders.
The company has previously raised around €3 million in investment.
Soundwave is a mobile music-discovery startup founded in 2012. Soundwave tracks what songs people are listening to on their smartphones and where in real time. Powered by unique patent-pending technology, users can plug into different groups of people and locations in real time to see what songs are trending & discover new music as quickly as it is played. Soundwave was launched on 20 June 2013 and has since been downloaded by 1.4 million users in over 194 countries worldwide.
