Remix Your Future

The streaming service is looking to strengthen music discovery for its users.

As its competitors better connect listeners with the right songs, Rhapsody International has hired the teams of two music discovery startups: the team behind Exfm, a developer of music discovery technologies and mobile apps that shut down earlier this year, and Schematic Labs, the developer of the Soundtracking social music app. Neither startup was acquired by Rhapsody.

“The Exfm team have done a great job of helping people discover more music to enjoy across the web," said Paul Springer, svp, Americas and head of product at Rhapsody, in a statement provided to Billboard. "We’re thrilled to have them join Rhapsody, and put that product, design and technology expertise to work on the things we’re building here. Together, we’ll help music fans explore, play and love more music.”

"By teaming up, we can build the ultimate music service with an amazing social discovery engine backed by Rhapsody’s catalog of over 30 million songs," Exfm explained in a blog post Monday.

Soundtracking claims its team is "already busy cooking up exciting new features" for Rhapsody. "With Soundtracking, they created an entirely new way for people to express themselves by sharing their musical moments," says Springer. "We’re excited to incorporate that creativity and community focus within Rhapsody’s suite of music services.”

An emphasis music discovery, or helping customers wade through tens of millions of songs, has changed music services in recent years. Spotify has acquired music technology company Echo Nest and music discovery app Tunigo. Twitter turned its acquisition of We Are Hunted into the unsuccessful Twitter Music service. Newcomer Beats Music is built around a specific, human-oriented way of delivering playlists to its users.