UPDATED 12/11/17, 2:30 p.m. ET: Apple has officially purchased the music recognition app Shazam. “We are thrilled that Shazam and its talented team will be joining Apple,” reads the company’s statement. Variety writes that this is “one of Apple’s biggest acquisitions to date.”
The company with the #hip music in all its ads praised Shazam: “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. We have exciting plans in store, and we look forward to combining with Shazam upon approval of today’s agreement.”
The acquired app said it “can’t imagine a better home for Shazam to enable us to continue innovating and delivering magic for our users. ”
The price tag hasn’t been unveiled yet, but last week’s reports estimated $401 million.
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Apple is getting real close to copping media-recognition app maker Shazam Entertainment for a cool $401 million. Casual. The report comes via TechCrunch, who isn’t naming and names when it comes to who spilled the beans (or shall we say bytes) on the potential deal. The $401 million price tag isn’t chump change, but it’s significantly less than half the $1.2 billion valuation Shazam announced in 2015.
Apple and Shazam have been working together for quite some time. Shazam app users can already click through to purchase songs they’ve identified on iTunes, and Shazam’s features are integrated with Siri.
Shazam launched all the way back in 1999 under the name 2580, because that was what you typed in via SMS to access the service. Shazam went on to make its appearance as one of the first apps available in Apple’s App Store back in 2008. Since then, it’s added a bunch of cool features. For example, users can now follow celebrities to see what music they’re Shazaming. Shazam has also evolved to allow their users to identify and share all kinds of media, not just music. They’ve even forayed into the world of augmented reality with their brand marketing service that lets users discover branded content based on pictures they take. Plus there’s the fact that "Shazam" has become a verb.
By September of 2016, Shazam said that their app was being downloaded over 1 billion times a day across 190 countries. Experts speculate those number have since increased. The Fox game show Beat Shazam was renewed for a second season in July.
