Apple Buying Shazam To Add To Apple Music: Confirmed

Updated on

Apple has bought Shazam, apparently to add or improve features in Apple Music. Although the news about Apple buying Shazam was reported on Friday unofficially, Apple itself has now confirmed the acquisition.

Apple buying Shazam

TechCrunch revealed the news about Apple buying Shazam on Friday, citing multiple unnamed sources. One of those sources reportedly valued the deal at about $401 million, while the other described the hefty sum as being in nine figures. PitchBook indicates that Shazam had a $1.02 billion valuation in 2015 in its last funding round, so either way, it sounds like Apple paid less the amount the firm was previously valued at.

Then today, 9to5 Mac updated that initial report about Apple buying Shazam with an official confirmation and statement from Apple. The iPhone maker describes the music recognition feature as “a natural fit” for Apple Music,” adding that it has “exciting plans in store” for the combination of Shazam with Apple Music.

A little over a year ago, Shazam said that it had passed 1 billion downloads, but it’s unclear just how many users it has now.

Here’s what Apple could do with Shazam

Shazam is integrated with Siri in iOS already, so you may have already used it without knowing. Users simply need to ask Siri to identify a song that’s playing, and Shazam will listen to it and then return a response. For a brief period, the music recognition feature recognized a song automatically, according to 9to5 Mac, but that was switched so that the feature can only respond to a question rather than automatically telling the user what song it hears.

With Apple buying Shazam, it’s only natural to consider why it made such a deal when it already had integrated the feature directly into Siri. All the iPhone maker would confirm is that the acquisition has something to do with Apple Music, which makes sense.

In addition to its well-known music recognition offering Shazam also offers other features that would play well with Apple Music. For example, artists with a listing on the platform allow users to follow artists. Apple has its own version of this called Connect, so it seems like the two could complement each other.

Shazam also offers an augmented reality platform that will look for content based on photos taken with the app.

What will happen to Shazam’s Android users?

Shazam also has its app on Android and a few other platforms, and for now, it’s unclear whether users of those other platforms will still be able to use the feature after the deal closes. It’s possible that Apple will continue to support Shazam’s services on other platforms in a fashion similar to what it did with Beats Music. The iPhone maker acquired Beats and then released an Android version of Apple Music later so that Android users could continue to use the service.

Leave a Comment