Tag: shazam

Apple Buys Shazam For $400 Million, Plans To Make It Ad-Free

Apple has completed the process of acquiring Shazam, the popular music identification app. The deal closed at $400 million. With the deal, Apple also made the promise to users to make the app ad-free.

Shazam rose to popularity for its ability to identify songs playing in the background. This includes songs that may be playing on your radio, in a bar, or anywhere around you. The app only needs to listen to a fragment of the song. It can then provide you the name of the song, the artist and even the lyrics.

Also read: Apple To Increase Shipments Of iPhone XR Due To Higher Demand

Over the years, Shazam added a host of other features such as the ability to identify films and TV shows as well. It also uses AR features where branded codes can be scanned to unlock deals. Apple said that the app has always been one of the favourites and was in fact one of the first apps to be available on the App Store. It also added that Shazam has been downloaded over 1 Billion times in the app store.

It is also known that Shazam has been integrated into Siri. When a user asks Siri to identify a particular song, Siri goes to Shazam’s database to find out. It can be expected that with this move, we can see a deeper integration of the app into Siri and a higher usability.

This does not mean that Shazam will drop its support for Android. The statement by Apple says that the app will be ad-free for ‘all users’ which means that we will see continued support for Android.

September 25, 2018
Apple Acquires Music Recognition App Shazam

Last week, it was reported that Apple was on the verge of acquiring of Shazam. On the 11th of December, Apple confirmed the acquisition of the popular music recognition app, Shazam. While neither of the concerned companies disclosed the value of the deal, a report by TechCrunch claims that the deal is worth US $400 million and that Snap and Spotify were potential buyers as well.

Acknowledging the acquisition, Apple said in a statement:

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. We have exciting plans in store, and we look forward to combining with Shazam upon approval of today’s agreement.

Shazam, one of the most popular music recognition app was launched back in 1999. Since then, the company has claimed that the Shazam app has been downloaded over 1 billion times and its users have used the app to recognise songs over 30 billion times. Shazam released a statement as well, seemingly confirming that the standalone Shazam app will continue functioning:

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.

Shazam was one of the first few services that took advantage of AI and offered it to a broader audience. As Apple prepares to invest big in AI and make its AI assistant, Siri smarter than the competition, this acquisition might go a long way in doing so.

Google Assistant, of all the AI assistant, might be the smartest in terms of music as of now, but, with Shazam onboard Siri can definitely compete and even come out on top in the battle of AI assistants. Even some analysts believe that Shazam could add significant value not only with its own service but also by making Siri smarter about music.

Music is an important part of Apple’s business, particularly as the company prepares to launch its HomePod smart speaker. Slated for a late-2017 launch, the smart speaker will now be launched in early 2018. Apple Music, Apple’s subscription-based music streaming service has roughly 30 million subscribers which is not even a half of what its direct rival Spotify has. Spotify has 60 million paying users as of July and 80 million more on its free service.

Apple HomePod

Analysts are saying that this acquisition is similar to one that Spotify made in 2014 when it purchased a music intelligence firm called The Echo Nest. The Echo Nest creates technology that generates music recommendations which is one of the most important features of Spotify.

Apple’s entry into AI and now the acquisition of Shazam means that Apple is willing to take on Spotify for the number one spot. As of now, the Shazam app redirects users to either Apple Music or Spotify to listen to the recognised song but, that might change in a bit and that might lead to a potential user acquisition.

December 12, 2017
Apple To Acquire Music Recognition Service Shazam

A new report claims that Apple is nearing a deal to buy the song identification app, Shazam, which could be on announced on the 13th of December.

One source describes the deal as in the nine figures; another puts it at around £300 million ($401 million). We are still asking around. Notably, though, the numbers we’ve heard are lower than the $1.02 billion (according to PitchBook) post-money valuation the company had in its last funding round, in 2015.

Shazam was founded in 1999 and has long been one of the most popular song identification apps on all platforms. Shazam announced last year that it had reached one billion downloads on smartphones. But, only recently did it start seeing profitability by incorporating advertisements and tying up with music streaming apps such as Spotify and Apple Music. It essentially directs the traffic from its app to these music streaming services by providing streaming links to a recently identified song.

It will be interesting to see how Apple implements Shazam into Apple Music and how it’ll affect the Spotify integration within the core Shazam app since Spotify is Apple’s biggest music streaming rival right now.

Apple said in September that its music streaming service had more than 30 million subscribers, a rapid rise but still trailing industry leader Spotify which said it had 60 million paying users as of July and 80 million more on its free service.

December 9, 2017
Check What Your Favorite Artists Are Listening to With Shazam’s Newest Update

Shazam, the popular music app that identifies what song is playing on any other medium, is about to update a new feature that will make it more than a magical blue button. At a TriBeCa event on Monday, Shazam has announced a new feature where you can follow your favorite artists and see what they are Shazaming. Pretty cool!

Daniel Danker, Chief Product Officer, Shazam, said

We want Shazam to continue to serve as a destination for music fans, increasingly becoming the center of their music world. For years Shazam has identified music with just one tap. Now it’s just as easy to open Shazam and tap once to discover and listen to great music.

The company has signed up 30 top-notch artists, including famous names like Pitbull, Calvin Harris, Maroon 5, Meghan Trainor, Coldplay, Usher, One Direction, Alicia Keys, Shakira, Mariah Carey, Imagine Dragons, Linkin Park, and many others. Soon after launch, Shazam says it will extend this functionality to include hundreds of others from around the world.

You will be able to follow artists’ pages within the app and “like” a musician’s search results, listen to songs they have searched for and get updates on the music they release. Songs that an artist has searched for will also show up in a user’s feed if they follow that artist.

With this, Shazam aims at a larger goal of making music discovery easier for its users. The company is already offering a number of ways to find new songs you like, including music charts, a news feed of sorts, Facebook integration, a worldwide map of users’ Shazam, a trending section to see the top tracks or the top tracks by particular regions, and much more. Shazam hopes to reach the top-most position in the world of music apps.

But, the world is competitive, and Shazam also has quite a good amount of rivals in this matter. The Shazam update comes the same day that Apple is scheduled to launch Apple Music, its paid streaming service. Tidal is another paid streaming service maintained by Jay-Z and it is placing itself in the market for fans to connect with their favourite artists and gain them access to exclusive content.

Shazam said the new feature will go live on Tuesday morning for iOS and Android devices. Lately, Shazam has been extending its scope by including visual identification. This update will soon let users identify or learn more about anything they point out at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IzK9qtb8Gc

June 30, 2015