Univision Partners With Napster for Revamped Uforia Music Streaming App

Univision is set to announce at SXSW today that it has partnered with Napster to bring more music streaming choices to its revamped Uforia app. In addition to live streams of Univision’s 58 local radio stations, the app is now also offering users hundreds of playlist based on Napster’s catalog of 40 million songs.“Univision has been a pioneer in Latin music,” said Univision Radio president Jesus Lara in an interview with Variety this week. However, Lara admitted that Univision didn’t have a good track record of coordinating its efforts across TV, local radio and online. That’s where Uforia comes in, which the company recently refreshed as a brand for all of its music efforts going forward. Part of these efforts is the new Uforia app, which Lara described as fine-tuned to Univision’s audience. “The Hispanic marketplace is a complex one,” he said, with Cuban-Americans preferring different tunes than music fans with a Mexican or Guatemalan heritage.Napster CEO Bill Patrizio argued that the Spotify’s and Apple Music’s of this world were often missing those nuances, and in turn ignoring Univision’s audience. “They are poorly served by today’s mainstream music services,” he said.