Shazam For Apple

12/12/2017

Apple and Shazam have had a friendly relationship for years, with the most obvious, helping with Apple Music. And After speculations circling over the week, Apple confirms that it has acquired the London-based music and image recognition.

Known as one of the earliest players in the world of mobile music, Shazam is Apple's bigger ambitions in entering the music business.

It was Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, that saw an opportunity for Shazam to help Apple in building its music business. Since the days of the iPod, music has long been a priority for the company.

Cue believes that Shazam could help improve Apple's offering and liked that the app had moved beyond music discovery.

Apple confirmed that the deal is at about $400 million.

The acquisition cost is far from the $1 billion Shazam was valued during its last funding round. The price drop was said to be a result of Shazam in having a hard time finding a viable business model, pulling in only $54 million in revenue in 2016.

The purchase is Apple’s biggest acquisition since it bought rapper Dr Dre’s headphones company Beats Electronics for $3 billion in 2014.

"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."

Shazam business is in music recognition has long been known.

Users use its app to capture a clip of music that is playing, and the algorithms then match the sound it heard using its “acoustic fingerprints”, against its large database. Then Shazam quickly show the information about the song the user is listening to.

Besides that, Shazam also added a number of other services, including showing users to other sites for them to download and listen to the music; providing more insights about music and artists; keeping charts of popular music based on the clips that it hears and that people want to identify.

It also branched to others, including marketing services that are based on visual recognition.

Before the acquisition, Shazam has brought more than 1 billion downloads of its app.

The acquisition was temporarily held up because of an investigation by the European Union, which scrutinized the deal over potential antitrust concerns. But after the regulators gave it a green light, Shazam is finally Apple's.