Spotify on Wednesday announced it has acquired Mediachain Labs. The Brooklyn-based startup has developed technology that Spotify hopes will aid it tracking royalties for the music it streams to listeners.
In a press release posted to Spotify’s webpage —and oddly removed —the firm plans to leverage Mediachain’s technology to help further its “journey toward a more fair, transparent and rewarding music industry for creators and rights owners,” VentureBeat reported earlier today. Terms of the deal were not immediately available, though the startup had raised some $1.5 million from a variety of investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures, according to CrunchBase.
Mediachain has developed technology that can identify, track, and manage creative content across the Internet. This makes the startup particularly attractive to a company like Spotify which needs to accurately calculate and pay out royalties for the musical content they stream to customers.
The popular streaming service is expected to make use of the Mediachain technology to avoid licensing disputes. The streaming service in the past has had to deal with lawsuits over improper media attribution and failures to pay songwriters for their work.
