Apple completes acquisition of music recognition app Shazam

By Anuj Sharma - September 25, 2018
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The app will soon offer its experience ad-free for all users so everyone can enjoy the best of Shazam without interruption. ....

Apple today announced it has completed its acquisition of Shazam, one of the most popular music apps, used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Apple acquired the UK-bred music recognition for approximately $400 million (£300m). Shazam has now become the latest in a string of UK technology firms to be bought up by larger businesses

“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 favourite app for music fans everywhere. 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,” Oliver Schusser, Apple’s Vice President of Apple Music.

Founded in 1999, Shazam allows people to use their smartphone or tablets to identify music by just listening to the tunes and also allows them to purchase music.  The app has over 100 million monthly active users and makes most of its revenue from commissions paid on referrals to Apple's iTunes Store. Shazam app has been downloaded over one billion times and users identify songs using the Shazam app over 20 million times each day.

The app will soon offer its experience ad-free for all users so everyone can enjoy the best of Shazam without interruption.

With this acquisition, Shazam would no longer be referring music lovers to rivals such as Spotify and Google Play Music. Currently, Spotify has 60 million users worldwide, while Apple Music has just 27 million.

The acquisition would also help Apple to uplift Apple Music by making it easier for users to find songs and add them to playlists. During the fiscal quarter of 2017, Apple reported $7.04 billion revenue -- up from $5.99 billion in the same period last year – from services business, which includes iTunes, iCloud, Apple Music, Apple Pay, Apple Care and the various App Store.

As to how Apple would integrate Shazam, which also goes head to head with SoundHound, is yet to be seen.

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