Spotify has announced its acquisition of WhoSampled, the widely recognized community-run database dedicated to tracking sampled music, covers, and remixes. This strategic move, revealed on Wednesday, aims to significantly enhance the streaming giant's music discovery capabilities, particularly through upcoming features like SongDNA.
The acquisition, which includes both WhoSampled's extensive database and its dedicated team, was shared by Spotify as part of a blog post detailing new song credits features. While the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, Spotify confirmed to TechCrunch that the acquisition covers both the WhoSampled team and its database. WhoSampled, a London-based company launched in 2008, reportedly had a small team of around 10 employees.
WhoSampled has cultivated an impressive repository of musical connections, documenting over 1.2 million songs and nearly 622,000 samples, covers, remixes, and artist relationships. This rich dataset is poised to become the backbone of Spotify's latest innovations, including the recently announced SongDNA tool, which promises to offer listeners deeper insights into the music they love.
This isn't the first collaboration between the two entities; WhoSampled previously partnered with Spotify in 2016, enabling its users to integrate their Spotify playlists and saved tracks directly within the WhoSampled app.
In its own announcement regarding the acquisition, WhoSampled assured its community that the standalone platform and brand would continue to operate. Furthermore, users can anticipate several improvements as WhoSampled integrates into Spotify's larger ecosystem. These enhancements are expected to include faster moderation times for submissions, the removal of display advertisements from the website in the coming weeks, and making its mobile applications available as free downloads with complimentary subscriptions.
The WhoSampled team expressed enthusiasm for the acquisition, stating in their announcement, "Through our recent discussions with Spotify, it became clear that we share a strong belief in the power of musical context — and a vision for helping listeners go deeper into the songs they love." They added, "Spotify has shown a genuine commitment to our mission, and we couldn't have found a better home for WhoSampled."
