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"Dropbox, the company behind the popular file-sharing service of the same name, has expanded its ranks with the\u00A0acquisition of personal music streaming service Audiogalaxy for an undisclosed sum.\r\n\r\nAudiogalaxy's team appear to have moved to Dropbox right away, putting a lock on new signups, while existing users can still access their accounts and various streaming features. However, the company has placed a limit on access to Mixes, alerting users that they will only be available until the end of the month (December 31).\r\n\r\nIn the blog post announcing the deal, Audiogalaxy's three members -- Michael Merhej, Tom Kleinpeter and\u00A0Viraj Mody -- say they are &amp;quot;excited about the opportunity to join the amazing folks at Dropbox and bring great new experiences to 100 million+ Dropbox users,&amp;quot; dangling a carrot that suggests their new employers are set to expand its cloud offering.\r\n\r\nWhat would an expansion include? Considering Audiogalaxy's experience in developing a simple and powerful\u00A0cloud music player, we could see Dropbox move further into the media playback market, providing new ways for its users to interact with their files from wherever they are.\r\n\r\nOr, could it be a new cloud music service?\r\n\r\nMeanwhile, Amazon is heavily pushing its Cloud Drive and MP3 services across the US, Europe and Asia, Google Drive is developing new collaboration features and is always a step away from Google Music integration, and Microsoft is building out its Skydrive platform across Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox devices.\r\n\r\nDropbox has pioneered how file-synchronisation\u00A0services work, but to stay on top it needs to continue innovating. The Audiogalaxy acquisition highlights a possible direction the company may move in, but for now we will have to wait and see.\r\n\r\nImage Credit: ilamont/Flickr"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/12/13/dropbox-acquires-music-streaming-company-audiogalaxy-but-why/>