Apple made a huge acquisition today. They purchased Shazam, the music recognition app.
Apple purchased Shazam at a reported $400 million. It isn’t the biggest acquisition that Apple has ever made (who can forget the $3 billion that they spent on Beats in 2014?), but it is still one of their largest to date.
Shazam is a music recognition app that allows users to find out the name of a song that they might not know. For example, if one were to hear a song by their favourite artist but they can’t remember the name of the song, or they hear a new artist that they like, all they would have to do is open the app, hold on to the Shazam button, and voila, the name of the song and the artist will appear.
The app also keeps a list of all the songs that the user has Shazamed so that they have the option to purchase them in the future.
Shazam has also frequently been one of the top sellers in the App Store, and has sold over 1 billion copies of the app to date.
A spokesperson for Apple and Shazam said, “We are thrilled that Shazam and its talented team will be joining Apple. Apple Music and Shazam are a natural fit… We have exciting plans in store.”
Although there have been rumours that Shazam was going to go public for several years, it is now ready to work with Apple so that finding music is easier for years to come.