Spotify acquired the online music studio startup Soundtrap in November 2017.
Soundtrap was founded in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2012 by Björn Melinder, Fredrik Posse, Gabriel Sjöberg, and Per Emanuelsson. Its browser-based studio was designed to make music and audio production collaborative, allowing people to record, arrange, and edit projects online without relying on a traditional desktop recording setup. It also expanded into podcast creation.
Soundtrap launched in beta in 2013 and was later presented at Google I/O. Before Spotify bought it, the company raised $6 million in Series A funding in 2016. Spotify announced the acquisition on November 17, 2017, as part of a broader effort to serve creators as well as listeners.
The name is easy to confuse with Audiotool, Soundation, or BandLab because each offers online music-making tools. The key clue is Soundtrap’s acquisition by Spotify. It operated as a freemium, cross-platform digital audio workstation, with features including virtual instruments, MIDI support, collaboration, and podcast workflows. Spotify later sold Soundtrap back to its founders in 2023, but that does not change the answer for the 2017 acquisition question.