eMusic and The Echo Nest Partner for Streaming Radio

**Waqas** · August 31, 2011

Digital music retailer eMusic has teamed up with music intelligence company The Echo Nest to launch a series of music discovery applications.

The first app in this series is called eMusic Radio. With Radio, eMusic offers streaming “stations” such as “Gimme Indie Rock!” and “All Things Electronic,” which are curated by eMusic staff and contributors as well as other knowledgeable personalities from the music industry. The service is now available in beta and is free for eMusic members.

Using The Echo Nest’s Playlist and Taste Profiling engines, the human curators behind the new eMusic Radio stations can augment their selections with additional tracks chosen based on artist connections, mood, and various attributes like tempo, time signature and key.

It sounds a bit like Pandora with a human touch. There are minimal social features, and eMusic is only offering 10 hours a month of free streaming. However, now seems like a good time to experiment with streaming music and discovery services, with Spotify gaining hold in the United States and iTunes in the Cloud taking advantage of streaming for Apple users. For a music retailer like eMusic, encouraging music discovery is an important, perhaps essential, part of driving sales.

The Echo Nest has been on a tear over the last year, signing deals with companies like Rdio, 7digital, the Public Radio Exchange, MTV’s Music Meter and Island Def Jam. The company is making a name for itself in the burgeoning music discovery space.

We like seeing The Echo Nest and eMusic working together and look forward to more collaborations between the two groups in the future. Will you be streaming music through eMusic Radio? Let us know in the comments.

Image Courtesy of Flickr, Robert Agthe

More About: Echo Nest, emusic, music, music streaming, streaming

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