Apple buys Shazam to help bolster Apple Music

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Remember showing off Shazam to your friends for the first time? You were maybe an early adopter of smartphones and there was this cool new app that could identify songs after hearing only a few seconds playing! It was like magic. Over time, the app has grown and improved to identify not only music, but also movies, TV shows, or even ads. Rumors spread over the weekend that Apple was purchasing the company, and those rumors have been confirmed with the deal announced today.

Apple confirmed the purchase in a statement to Buzzfeed News:

We are thrilled that Shazam and its talented team will be joining Apple. Since the launch of the App Store, Shazam has consistently ranked as one of the most popular apps for iOS. Today, it’s used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, across multiple platforms.

Apple Music and Shazam are a natural fit, sharing a passion for music discovery and delivering great music experiences to our users. We have exciting plans in store, and we look forward to combining with Shazam upon approval of today’s agreement.

Official terms of the deal have not been disclosed, though it’s rumored to hit somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 million USD. Apple is expected to integrate Shazam technology more deeply into iOS itself since Siri already has Shazam’s music recognition built in. If Apple decides to simply shut down the app after baking the technology into iOS and Apple Music, it would definitely be a shot across the bow of Spotify. As it stand now, Shazam users can choose to open discovered music via Spotify, providing them with loads and loads of potential users.

Mike Kelly, CEO of Kelly Newman Ventures weighed in on the upcoming purchase:

While Shazam has a huge consumer footprint and usage, it was never successful creating a sustainable repeatable revenue and business model. Shazam has fantastic technology that is under-leveraged. It provides a huge data trove that can be used at apple music and Apple TV. They have an existing deep relationship with Apple that was evidently providing apple with enough value for them to buy the company.

What do you think about Apple’s latest purchase? Tell us all about it in the comment section below, or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.

[button link=”https://www.buzzfeed.com/daveyalba/yep-apple-is-buying-shazam-the-music-recognition-app?utm_term=.osn3zvV2B#.lpmPLwk2R” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Buzzfeed News[/button][button link=”https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/11/16761984/apple-shazam-acquisition” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Via: The Verge[/button]
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