Apple has announced that it has completed its acquisition of Shazam, popular music recognition service. The Cupertino company first announced the acquisition in December last year. While Apple has remained mum about the value of the deal, Recode reports that it’s worth USD400 million.
Shazam is a long-standing music recognition service that has seen over one billion downloads. The highly-rated service lets you identify songs simply by listening to music playing around you. For instance, if you hear a song you like on radio, or something playing on TV, fire up Shazam and it will identify the song for you.
Integration with Spotify comes in handy too. Once you’ve connected Shazam with your Spotify account, all songs you “Shazam” will be placed in a My Shazam playlist.
According to Apple, Shazam users identify songs using the Shazam app over 20 million times each day.
The troubled company, however, has yet to turn a profit, and has found it challenging to find a viable business model. It raked in only USD54 million in revenue in 2016. The speculated USD400 million deal is a huge discount from Shazam’s USD1 billion valuation in 2015.
“Apple and Shazam have a long history together. Shazam was one of the first apps available when we launched the App Store and has become a favorite app for music fans everywhere,” said Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music. “With a shared love of music and innovation, we are thrilled to bring our teams together to provide users even more great ways to discover, experience and enjoy music.”
The last high-profile acquisition by Apple was Beats by Dre in 2014, which has since evolved into an expansive audio hardware portfolio and music streaming service.
Apple stands to gain plenty from the deal. Already integrated with Siri, Shazam could gain even deeper integration with iOS and macOS in the near future. Shazam also has augmented reality tech that could be useful in boosting Apple’s AR ambitions.
