In a move that totally makes sense for the brand, Apple has confirmed it acquired the music and image recognition service Shazam.
Tech Crunch broke this story last week, then Apple put the stamp on the news of them acquiring the London based music recognition service. Shazam allows users to identify music, movies, commercials and TV shows by listening to short audio clips.The deal is reportedly worth $400 million and Apple hopes this deal will help with their bigger ambitions in the music business. That’s well below Shazam’s once reported $1 billion post-valuation, the company has recently been on the decline due to the inability to find a viable business model and underperforming by only pulling in $56 million in 2016.
Apple in a statement to Tech Crunch said this about Shazam’s acquisition:
“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.”
While this deal cements the two exclusivities with each other, they have worked together in the past. Shazam already refers many of it’s 100 million users to play music on the Apple Music platform. Here is what Shazam had to say about the new deal in a statement to The Verge:
“Shazam is one of the highest rated apps in the world and loved by hundreds of millions of users and we can’t imagine a better home for Shazam to enable us to continue innovating and delivering magic for our users.”
Apple Music is king when it comes to the streaming wars, but other services like Spotify and Tidal offer better unique experiences. With Shazam/s acquisition this might be the move put Apple even further on top. We are interested to see how Shazam and their use of augmented reality technology will help improve Apple Music in the future.
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Photo; Shazam
