Spotify acquired the music licensing platform Loudr in April 2018.
Loudr was built to help independent musicians and rights holders manage digital music licensing, publishing, and royalty-related processes. That made it strategically different from a streaming catalog or a conventional record label: its focus was on the infrastructure needed to identify works, secure permissions, and get creators paid when music was distributed online.
Spotify acquired Loudr on April 12, 2018. The purchase fit Spotify’s wider attempt to improve relationships with artists, songwriters, publishers, and other rights owners. Music streaming depends not only on delivering recordings but also on accurately connecting recordings to compositions and the people entitled to royalties.
CD Baby, Songtrust, and TuneCore are plausible distractors because they also work with independent artists, distribution, publishing, or royalty administration. They are not the company named in Spotify’s 2018 acquisition. Another possible source of confusion is Spotify’s later purchase of Mediachain in 2017, which involved attribution and metadata technology. Loudr’s defining association in this question is music licensing, making it the canonical answer.