Omnifone has been revealed as the B2B technology partner behind Samsung’s Pandora rival, Milk Music, on smartphones and tablets in New Zealand and Australia.
Milk Music, Samsung’s new streaming radio service, launched in Australasia in February. However, it came under fire from independent label commercial rep Merlin, who complained that Samsung “hadn’t bothered” to license the indies before bringing the platform to the market.
Milk Music offers consumers the chance to scan through stations and genres and listen to tracks using its navigation dial. Omnifone says its own ‘in-house musicologists’ are responsible for curating millions of songs on Milk.
Nicholas Wodtke, Vice President, Media Solution Centre, Southeast Asia and Oceania, Samsung Electronics said: “With Milk Music, we are offering consumers an amazing and rich music experience personalised around what matters to them and their lifestyle.
“By leveraging Omnifone’s comprehensive MusicStation platform, we are in a position to provide our Milk Music service to more customers and enjoy the flexibility to scale with Omnifone .”
Jeff Hughes, CEO, Omnifone, said: “We are delighted to support Samsung in the first launch of its Milk Music service New Zealand and Australia. Samsung has triumphed in bringing a high quality radio streaming service to consumers via its top selling devices. With support from our unmatched music cloud, Samsung can continue to attract more users and rapidly gain an advantage in the global streaming market.”
“We are committed to expanding our global footprint and evolving our platform to achieve the flexibility and capabilities our customers require to expand and deploy new functionality to more users quickly. Our market-leading music cloud and acknowledged expertise enables partners across the breadth of the industry to remain ahead of the curve and provide innovative services in today’s fast growing digital music market.”
Omnifone supplies music cloud capabilities for Milk including catalogue ingestion, content preparation and provision, track sequencing, playback metering, rights holder reporting, integration with third party features, content curation and global licensing support.
Meanwhile, Omnifone has updated its B2B offering to partners, MusicStation. The platform has been moved entirely to the cloud, which Omnifone says will achieve “unrivalled flexibility and the ability to scale near infinitely”.
Omnifone recently lost the account for Sony Playstation’s music streaming product, with the video games company deciding to can its own platform – Music Unlimited – and instead adopt Spotify as a third-party partner.
The company is looking for a buyer for its own consumer-facing streaming platform, Rara.com.Music Business Worldwide
