Apple To Acquire Swell Talk Radio And Podcast App For 30 Million

Apple appears to be looking to further improve the iTunes Radio service through the $30 million acquisition of a radio application called Swell, Re/code reported early Monday morning. Unlike the $3 billion Beats Electronics (and Beats Music) buyout, however, this purchase centers more on talk radio than music.

Swell currently carries news from sources such as NPR, ABC, ESPN, the BBC, and more, and uses a user’s listening history to create personalized content playlists. Apple, on the other hand, only recently jumped into the streaming news market through iTunes Radio with ESPN and NPR stations, including over 40 local stations.

It’s also possible that rather the Swell technology will power podcast recommendations. The Swell service will be shut down and likely removed from sale later this week, according to the Re/code report. The team responsible for the app and its backend service will be moved to Apple.

It seems Apple is quite interested in creating more personalized recommendations for its various stores and services. The Cupertino company also purchased BookLamp, an e-book discovery service, last week for somewhere between $10-15 million.