Echo Nest Builds Music Audience Tool

US music intelligence company The Echo Nest has expanded its existing platform to offer targeted advertising, based on detailed segmentation of music fans by lifestyle, demographics and devotion to musical genres.

Based in Somerville, MA, the firm holds a repository of music data and intelligence to provide developers with an understanding of music content and listeners. Its customer base extends to more than 100 million music fans every month and over 400 applications have been built on its platform.

The new 'Music Audience Understanding' tool can be used to predict high-value demographic audience segments from anonymous streaming music preference data. These segments include music fans by age and gender, their affinity with 20 lifestyle categories (such as gaming, food etc), their affinity with '710 music genres', and behavioral segments such as 'mainstreamness' and 'freshness'.

CEO Jim Lucchese (pictured) comments: 'We invested over two years of R&D to help music services turn anonymous listening behavior into high-value audience segments for advertising. The Echo Nest can now analyze music taste and predict non-music affinities in high-value advertising segments.'

Web site: www.echonest.com .