Apple confirmed that it’s acquiring the London based development company, Shazam, a popular music-identification app that recognizes any song, TV show, movie, or ad after hearing just a few bars of the audio clip.
“We are thrilled that Shazam and its talented team will be joining Apple,” Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr said in a statement to Buzzfeed. “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,” Neumayr continued. “We have exciting plans in store, and we look forward to combining with Shazam upon approval of today’s agreement.”
Although the final acquisition deal isn’t disclosed yet, according to few reports Apple is paying $400 million for the U.K based startup.
Shazam was actually founded in 1999 but gained popularity as a mobile app after Apple launched its App Store in 2008. Later it then became one of the 10 most popular apps in the world by 2013. Apple’s digital assistant Siri attained Shazam integration in 2014, so users could ask it what song is playing in the background. Currently, Shazam has more than 1 billion downloads. However, the company has had a hard time lately, pulling in only $54 million in revenue in 2016.
Despite the low revenues, Shazam can help Apple in improving the user experience and embedding more capabilities deeply into Apple’s music services. In November 2017, Shazam had about 175 million monthly active users globally across iOS and Android, according to research firm App Annie.
