Apple’s latest acquisition is Semetric, the UK start-up behind the Musicmetric analytics service that helps record labels track digital sales, streams and social stats.
The technology is likely to be a key component in Apple’s next phase of its music strategy that follows its US$3bn acquisition of Beats last year and which could see an overhaul of the iTunes platform to more readily compete with rivals such as Pandora, Rdio and Spotify.
Semetric’s Musicmetric dashboard helps everyone from emerging artists to established record labels gather intelligence that will influence their brand.
The platform trawls a variety of platforms from BitTorrent downloads, YouTube views and social media statistics, to give artists and labels a realistic view of their digital and cultural impact.
Former music industry executives Matt Jeffery, Marie-Alicia Chang and Gregory Mead founded the London-headquartered Semetric in 2008.
The company raised US$4.7m in January 2013 in a first round from Imperial Innovations and Pentech Ventures.
The investment set Semetric on the road to build similar intelligence dashboards for other digital media products, including e-books, TV shows, films and games.
Digital music image via Shutterstock
