Partnership Enables Over One Billion Rakuten Viber Users to Access, Share and Play Akazoo Music and Radio Streaming, Globally, Through Popular Messaging Platform 

Akazoo S.A., a leading global music streaming platform and technology company announced a global strategic partnership with Rakuten Viber, a global instant messaging, chat and voiceover IP platform. The strategic partnership will enable Viber users to access, listen to and share music, playlists, stations and lyrics from Akazoo through the popular messaging platform.

The innovative global partnership will enable direct access to Akazoo’s global music streaming service through Viber’s network of more than one billion users, worldwide. Viber users will be able to search, access, play, and jointly listen to music playlists, stations, curated by Akazoo’s proprietary and patented Sonic Artificial intelligence (AI) engine, and participate in live listening rooms. Access will be available “in-app,” directly from within Viber messenger and will be offered as an extension of the core chat functionality.

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The parties have agreed to launch the partnership in 17 countries and have agreed to an exclusive co-promotion of the in-app music integration.

The goal of the collaboration is to inspire a joint music listening experience in a social and real-time context. It also paves the way for popular messaging platforms and social media to offer music entertainment content to their users via Akazoo music streaming for messaging and social media, a targeted offering enabling direct in-app access to music entertainment content for partners to drive increased engagement and revenue growth.

 Akazoo’s Founder and CEO, Apostolos N. Zervos, said, “With audiences spending more time on messaging apps and consuming music on their devices, enriching messaging and social media with music is a natural fit. Granting audiences, the ability to enjoy the same music at the same time only advances and enriches both their musical as well as their social experience. Rakuten Viber is an ideal partner for this innovative offering and we look forward to a successful partnership.”

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“Viber’s mission has always been to bring fun and valuable solutions to users in the palm of their hands. We are loving the experience we’ve created with Akazoo to give users a more natural and conversational way for them to discover new music and enhance their experience directly within the Viber app,” said Cristina Constandache, Chief Revenue Officer at Viber. “We are excited to roll out this initiative and partner with Akazoo to offer engaging music entertainment to our users across the world.”

Akazoo S.A., SONG, currently operates in 25 countries, including emerging markets that represent the music streaming industry’s fastest growing markets. Akazoo’s platform boasts patented Sonic AI music recommendation and profiling technology, developed to support its hyper-local strategy. In the past five years, SONG’s premium subscribers have grown from 1.1 million in 2014 to over 5.3 million and the platform has over 43 million total registered users.

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