Apple is gearing up to acquire Shazam, a popular music recognition service in a bid to tap into the music world and also to beat competitors. According to TechCrunch, the merger will be one of the most popular and premium venture after the acquisition of the Beats in 2014. Apple devices are tightly integrated with Shazam and they are capable of performing a wide range of activities.
If you are unaware, Shazam has been integrated into Siri since iOS 8, which enables the voice assistant to identify songs that are playing aloud. If a song is playing on Television and if you ask Siri – What song is this?, the digital assistant will make use of Shazam to identify the relevant song.
Shazam is also directly integrated with Apple Music since the subscribers can tap the song from within Apple Music to play them. Moreover, they can add songs to a Shazam playlist.
Shazam effectively makes use of machine learning techniques to identify and fetch short audio clips from songs, TV shows and podcasts. The music service has a partnership with Apple and they have released standalone apps for iOS, macOS, and watchOS. The app also ships with an augmented reality capability, which helps you to locate content based on the images captured using the app.
According to unconfirmed sources, the total value of the acquisition would be around $401 million.Interestingly, the numbers are lower than the estimated $1.02 billion, which was arrived at during the last valuation in 2015, when the company did last round of funding.
The relevant agreement would be signed by both Apple and the music streaming company by early next week. Moreover, both companies are also expected to reveal more information about the deal at a press meet on Monday.
Previously, Shazam had raised $143.5 million from various investors including Kleiner Perkins, Sony Music, Universal Music and Access Industries and London’s DN Capital. Perkins also invested in rival SoundHound. According to reports, the music streaming service had passed over one billion downloads as of September 2016.
Launched in 1999, Shazam was first introduced via SMS. You need to key in the number 2580 to access the music service in the UK. After the initial launch, the music service was improved on several counts by launching a wide range of services.
