Music discovery startup, TastemakerX, has been acquired by Rdio

After Spotify acquired The Echo Nest earlier this year, rival music streaming service Rdio had to ditch the music data platform as it didn’t want to share data with competitors. Now Rdio has acquired curation service TastemakerX to boost music discovery for its listeners, coming up against Spotify which has said it wanted to use The Echo Nest to build “the best user experience and music discovery engine for millions of global fans.” San Francisco-based TastemakerX was founded in 2011 to let listeners discover new music, build and listen to their collections of their favorite artists, as well as browse other artists based on social discovery. Rdio will be absorbing the entire startup’s team as well, including former CEO and co-founder Marc Ruxin, as well as another co-founder Sandro Pugilese.

Rdio has acquired music discovery service TastemakerX, according to a Pando report published today. TastemakerX started as a streaming music service that sought to appeal to the inner music enthusiast (or music snob) in all of us by enticing people to share new music with friends via a gamification model. It later pivoted to focus on what people were sharing across all music services, including Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, and, yes, Rdio. As part of the acquisition deal, TastemakerX founder Marc Ruxin will become Rdio’s new COO, while the entire seven-employee TastemakerX team will also join the company, Ruxin confirmed to VentureBeat. While the company has yet to make a formal announcement about the acquisition, the move could have something to do with TastemakerX’s ability to collect data on how people listen to music. Earlier this year, Rdio decided to stop using The Echo Nest’s music data (recommendations, etc.) after Spotify acquired the service. TastemakerX could help fill the gap The Echo Nest has left. That might be part of it, but Ruxin said he and his team will be focused more on finding a unique approach for sharing with the people you speak with often.