In the previous week, the rumor mill had unearthed that Apple may acquire Shazam, well-known app that allow users to use audio clips to identify songs, movies, TV shows and commercials. Today, Apple has officially confirmed that it has take over Shazam by spending $400 million. The deal is expected to close after the prerequisite regulatory approvals are met with.
Shazam is one of the first apps that had appeared on Apple’s App Store in 2008. It allowed iPhone 3G users to purchase those songs from iTunes that they could discover through Shazam. With the arrival of iOS, Apple allowed the integration of Shazam’s song finding capabilities with Siri. Now, Shazam not only allows users to identify songs, but also other content such as TV shows, movie posters, magazine commercials and AR. It is said that Apple CEO Tim Cook was interested in acquiring Shazam because of its to identify AR content.
Apple has been consistently acquiring various startups and popular companies, but it has been mostly silent about the acquisitions it carried out. However, the Cupertino company has confirmed through an official statement that it has taken over Shazam brand name as well as the U.K. based company by spending around $400 million. It is speculated that the deal could have been in works since past five months. Other firms like Snapchat and Spotify were also reportedly interested to take over Shazam.
As of October 2016, Shazam’s mobile app has been downloaded over 1 billion times since launch. However, the company had struggled in finding a suitable business model because of which it could generate $54 million in revenue in the previous year. It is lower than the last round of valuation of the company which revealed that is was worth over $1 billion.
It remains to be seen how Apple will utilize the capabilities of Shazam. However, it appears that the Cupertino company may integrate it with the Apple Music app to somehow improve the music experience on its iOS devices. As mentioned above, Shazam is already integrated with Siri. However, with the acquisitions Apple may bring deeper integration into the iOS just as Google may has brought song recognition feature on Pixel 2 duo. Apple may also Shazam’s AR technology to bring Google Lens-like visual recognition feature on iOS.