Spotify has acquired CrowdAlbum, a startup that aggregates photos and videos from concerts, Spotify said on Wednesday.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Spotify says that CrowdAlbum will help it continue to build products and tools for musicians to interact with their fans and better understand their preferences and behaviors.
Founded in 2013, CrowdAlbum gathers all the photos and videos shared on Twitter and Instagram without fans needing to use hashtags, presumably by using time and location data about the social media posts. The albums can then be shared and embedded by fans and music artists. CrowdAlbum says it already works with more than 1,000 artists and venue partners in the U.S.
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It’s still unclear whether Spotify will shutter CrowdAlbum’s service, a company spokeswoman told Coins2Day.
CrowdAlbum is only the latest acquisition by Spotify aimed at helping it build more social features for artists and fans. In January, it announced it had acquired SoundWave and Cord, two startups with a common theme of encouraging online social interaction between users. Soundwave used group messaging and playlists to let users discuss music, while Cord let users send and receive short voice messages in a text messaging-like way. Both SoundWave and Cord have since been shut down.
Spotify’s main rival, Apple Music, has a service called Connect that lets music artists interact with fans and share content with them.
CrowdAblbum will join the Spotify team responsible for building tools for music artists. It recently released Concerts, which promotes shows to relevant fans, and Spotify Fan Insights, which provides data to artists about their fans’ demographics, geographic spread, and the number of times people have listened to their music.
