AcoustID
AcoustID OÜ operates an open source audio identification platform built on its Chromaprint fingerprinting algorithm, serving music player developers, music catalog managers, and individual enthusiasts through a tiered API with a free non-commercial tier and commercial subscriptions from €50 to €500 per month.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2010
- HeadquartersTallinn, Estonia
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What AcoustID does
AcoustID OÜ is an Estonian private limited company that operates an open source audio identification platform built on its proprietary Chromaprint fingerprinting algorithm. The Chromaprint algorithm extracts compact audio fingerprints (2.5 KB per 2-minute file) in under 100 milliseconds, optimized for matching near-identical audio streams, and AcoustID maintains a custom-indexed crowd-sourced database of over 30 million fingerprints, nearly 10 million of which are mapped to MusicBrainz for metadata enrichment. The platform is delivered through a Webservice API and is integrated into more than 100 applications, primarily music players, library organization tools, and music catalog management systems, with the flagship integration being MusicBrainz Picard. Cross-referencing with MusicBrainz identifiers and Cover Art Archive gives clients access to song titles, artist names, and cover art images.
The company monetizes via tiered API subscriptions: a permanent free tier for non-commercial use (unlimited searches, rate-limited to 3 requests/second), and three commercial tiers at €50/month (1M searches), €100/month (15M searches), and €500/month (150M searches), each with a 10k free trial. Self-serve signup is conducted through acoustid.biz, with payments processed via Braintree. The product is sold horizontally to music player developers, large music catalog managers, and individual music enthusiasts, with no geographic restrictions documented.
Founded by Lukáš Lalinský as an open source project in 2010 and incorporated as AcoustID OÜ in 2016, the company is founder-owned, employs 1-10 people, operates without external funding, and is headquartered at Sepapaja 6, Tallinn. The firm is currently developing new audio identification solutions beyond its existing Chromaprint-based service, signaling intent to expand its product surface while maintaining the open source positioning that has driven organic adoption.
AcoustID firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- AcoustID
- Legal name
- AcoustID OÜ
- Website
- https://acoustid.biz
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2010
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- AcoustID OÜ operates an open source audio identification platform built on its Chromaprint fingerprinting algorithm, serving music player developers, music catalog managers, and individual enthusiasts through a tiered API with a free non-commercial tier and commercial subscriptions from €50 to €500 per month.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
AcoustID industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Audio Identification / Audio Fingerprinting
- NAICS
- Other Sound Recording Industries (512290), Sound Recording Industries (5122)
- SIC
- Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Music Recognition, Lyrics & Metadata Platforms (MPAIADAK)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Content Identification & Matching (Fingerprinting, ID Resolution) (MPAHALAE), Recorded Music Metadata, Fingerprinting & Anti-Piracy (CID/Content ID) (MPAIAAAJ)
Keywords
Where AcoustID is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Tallinn
- HQ country
- Estonia
- HQ region
- Europe
Offices1 record
Markets served
AcoustID business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Personnel, Operations
Revenue model
- Commercial API Subscriptions: Monthly subscription plans (Small €50, Medium €100, Large €500) providing API access with different search volume limits. Paid monthly for the previous month's usage. Includes free trial of 10k searches. Non-commercial applications are free with rate limiting.
- Usage-based Search Quotas: Pricing tiers are based on the number of searches allowed per month (1M for Small, 15M for Medium, 150M for Large). Usage beyond free tier is tiered by subscription plan.
- Freemium Open Source Tier: Open source/non-commercial use is free with unlimited searches but rate-limited to 3 requests/second. This tier supports the open source community and drives adoption among developers.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Monthly | Free tier for non-commercial/open source use with unlimited searches but rate-limited |
| Subscription | Monthly | Small commercial plan - 1 million searches per month |
| Subscription | Monthly | Medium commercial plan - 15 million searches per month |
| Subscription | Monthly | Large commercial plan - 150 million searches per month |
Go-to-market motion1 record
Distribution channels1 record
Marketing channels5 records
AcoustID product offering
Product offeringCore offering
AcoustID provides an open-source audio identification API that identifies unknown audio files by extracting compact audio fingerprints with the Chromaprint algorithm and matching them against a crowd-sourced database of more than 30 million fingerprints mapped to MusicBrainz metadata. The service returns song titles, artists, MusicBrainz identifiers, and cover art links to developers integrating it into music players, library managers, and large music catalogs. Commercial use is sold via tiered monthly subscriptions; non-commercial and open-source use is free of charge.
Product overview
AcoustID offers a unified audio identification platform built around its open source Chromaprint fingerprinting algorithm. The core service includes a Webservice API for submitting audio fingerprints and searching a crowd-sourced database of over 30 million fingerprints mapped to MusicBrainz metadata. The product portfolio spans free and commercial pricing tiers (Open Source at free, Small at €50/month, Medium at €100/month, and Large at €500/month) differentiated by search volume and rate limits. Additional offerings include the downloadable database and integration with MusicBrainz and Cover Art Archive for metadata enrichment.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- AcoustID Audio Identification Service API-based audio identification service that accepts audio fingerprints and returns identified song metadata (title, artist, MusicBrainz identifiers) by searching a 30M+ crowd-sourced fingerprint database; sold via tiered monthly subscriptions to developers building music applications and to catalog managers, with a free non-commercial tier.
- Chromaprint Audio Fingerprinting Algorithm Open-source audio fingerprint extraction algorithm optimized for matching near-identical audio streams; extracts a 2.5 KB fingerprint from a two-minute file in under 100 ms, intended for developers embedding audio identification in their own applications.
- AcoustID Fingerprint Database Crowd-sourced, downloadable database of more than 30 million audio fingerprints with associated song, artist, and MusicBrainz metadata (almost 10 million mapped to MusicBrainz), enabling offline batch identification and catalog reconciliation use cases.
Quantifiable outcome
- Audio fingerprint extraction in less than 100ms for a two-minute audio file
- +3 more outcomes
Companies that use AcoustID
Customer profileSegments3 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
AcoustID technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration2 records
AI capability2 records
Feature4 records
AcoustID partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Three partnerships are on record, tiered core.
- MusicBrainzcoreMusicBrainz is the primary data partner, providing high-quality open source music metadata including song titles, artist names, and identifiers. AcoustID maps its audio fingerprints to MusicBrainz records for accurate metadata. The integration also enables access to Cover Art Archive for cover art images. MusicBrainz Picard was the original primary use case for AcoustID development.
- MusicBrainz PicardcoreMusicBrainz Picard is the original music tagger application that was the primary use case driving AcoustID's creation. Picard uses AcoustID for automatic audio identification and tagging, representing the flagship integration that helped establish AcoustID in the market.
- ChromaprintcoreChromaprint is the open source audio fingerprinting algorithm developed by Lukáš Lalinský that powers AcoustID. It is available at acoustid.org and is the technical foundation of the service. The algorithm is optimized for speed and compactness for audio matching.
Scale indicators4 records
Recent moves5 records
Expansion highlights4 records
AcoustID competitors and assessment
Company assessmentBroad incumbents
- YACAPPS / Yandex Music Identification: Yandex operates a proprietary audio fingerprinting service within its music and search products. Although primarily serving the Russian market, it represents a broader incumbent in audio identification with comparable technology to AcoustID, especially for catalog and rights management use cases.
- SoundHound: SoundHound provides speech and audio recognition technology including music identification capabilities. While broader in scope than AcoustID (focusing on voice AI), its audio identification technology competes for the same customer use cases around content recognition and catalog management.
- Shazam (Apple): Shazam, owned by Apple, provides consumer-facing audio identification at massive scale via a mobile app. While its B2B fingerprinting infrastructure is not publicly offered as a standalone API like AcoustID, it represents the canonical audio identification service and shapes market expectations for fingerprint-based identification.
- Gracenote: Gracenote (owned by Nielsen) is a leading provider of music metadata, audio identification, and content recognition solutions for the global entertainment industry. While it operates at a much larger scale than AcoustID, it competes directly in the audio fingerprinting and music metadata space for enterprise customers.
Regional players
- Audiam: Audiam provides music rights administration and identification services for publishers and songwriters. While focused on rights administration rather than technical fingerprinting, it operates in the same music metadata and catalog management space that AcoustID serves.
Direct peers
- Audible Magic: Audible Magic offers commercial audio and video fingerprinting services for content identification, rights management, and copyright compliance. It targets music labels, streaming platforms, and broadcasters with similar fingerprint-matching capabilities as AcoustID, including catalog identification workflows.
- ACRCloud: ACRCloud provides audio fingerprinting and content recognition APIs for music identification, broadcast monitoring, and second-screen synchronization. It is a direct competitor to AcoustID, serving similar developer and catalog management customers with comparable API-based identification services.
Others
- MusicBrainz: MusicBrainz is the open source music metadata database to which AcoustID maps its fingerprints. While not a direct competitor, it is AcoustID's most strategic data partner and serves the same developer and catalog management community, making it a closely adjacent ecosystem participant.
- Beatport: Beatport is a leading electronic music download and streaming platform with its own catalog identification and metadata workflows. While not a direct competitor to AcoustID's API service, Beatport represents a music catalog operator that relies on audio fingerprinting technologies for its core operations.
- Deezer: Deezer is a global music streaming service that operates its own audio fingerprinting infrastructure for catalog management and content identification. While primarily a streaming platform rather than an identification vendor, its use of comparable fingerprinting technology makes it a relevant adjacent peer in the audio identification ecosystem.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses4 records
Competitive moat4 records
Key risks5 records
Key highlights6 records
Customer concentration
AcoustID social profiles
Digital presenceAcoustID financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
AcoustID leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles1 record
AcoustID funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
AcoustID M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about AcoustID
What does AcoustID do?
AcoustID provides an open-source audio identification API that identifies unknown audio files by extracting compact audio fingerprints with the Chromaprint algorithm and matching them against a crowd-sourced database of more than 30 million fingerprints mapped to MusicBrainz metadata. The service returns song titles, artists, MusicBrainz identifiers, and cover art links to developers integrating it into music players, library managers, and large music catalogs. Commercial use is sold via tiered monthly subscriptions; non-commercial and open-source use is free of charge.
Is AcoustID a public or private company?
AcoustID is a private company. It is classified as founder individual operated bootstrapped and is currently operating.
When was AcoustID founded?
AcoustID was founded in 2010. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is AcoustID based?
AcoustID is headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia, in the Europe region.
How does AcoustID make money?
Three revenue lines are on record. Commercial API Subscriptions are the primary driver. The others are usage-based Search Quotas and freemium Open Source Tier.
Who are AcoustID's main competitors?
Broad incumbents on record are YACAPPS / Yandex Music Identification, SoundHound, Shazam (Apple) and Gracenote. Audiam is listed as a regional player. Direct peers are Audible Magic and ACRCloud. Others are MusicBrainz, Beatport and Deezer.
Does AcoustID have an API?
Yes. AcoustID provides a Webservice API that allows users to submit audio fingerprints and search the database for information about songs. The API is accessible at acoustid.org/webservice. The service returns metadata including song title, artist, and links to the MusicBrainz database. All code is 100% open source and the database is available for download. Developer documentation is at acoustid.org/webservice.
What industry is AcoustID in?
AcoustID's product category is Audio Identification / Audio Fingerprinting. Its primary akta.pro industry code is MPAIADAK, Music Recognition, Lyrics & Metadata Platforms, with a secondary code of MPAHALAE, Content Identification & Matching (Fingerprinting, ID Resolution). Its NAICS code is 512290 and its SIC code is 7372.