Music intelligence platform The Echo Nest has teamed up with EMI Music to allow developers to have access to music, videos, photos and artwork to use for developing new apps for a range of mobile platforms.

The partnership will see the most extensive collection of licensed music and related content made available in this way, according to The Echo Nest. The hope is that the availability of the material will pave the way for innovative apps to be developed.

Revenue from the resulting apps will be shared between developers and the rights holders of the content. EMI will deal with licensing issues, as well as marketing the apps, although the underlying intellectual property will remain property of the developer.

The partnership is targetting apps for the web, iPad, iPhone, Android and other platforms.

The tie-up is part of EMI’s OpenEMI initiative, which is focused on digital innovation and improving the music licensing process for new digital applications in a way that will suit developers. A post on The Echo Nest’s blog said that one of the biggest challenges for music app develops is finding out how to incorporate commercial music in their apps, something the tie-up with EMI is intended to tackle.

The Echo Nest is hosting and managing sandboxes for developers which contain creative briefs and provide opportunities to collaborate to build apps related to EMI artists such as Gorillaz, Pet Shop Boys and Tinie Tempah. There is also content from EMI’s Blue Note record jazz catalogue.

The sandboxes also include The Echo Nest’s repository of music information including five billion data points and developer tools such as dynamic playlist APIs, open source audio fingerprinting and remix software.