Apple Has Confirmed the Acquisition of Shazam

Last Friday, it was reported Apple had acquired London-based music recognition app Shazam, in a deal which was said to be worth $400 million US.

This morning, Apple has confirmed the acquisition to multiple media outlets, including TechCrunch, which originally reported the story. Here’s Apple’s full statement below:

“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. 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 obvious reason for the acquisition was to tie in the music recognition app to Apple Music, which Apple said “was a natural fit”. You can bet Siri and HomePod will have some sort of Shazam integration soon too.

Shazam said the following in a statement to TechCrunch:

“We are excited to announce that Shazam has entered into an agreement to become part of Apple. 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.”

Recode also reported Snapchat also had interest in acquiring Shazam, with talks taking place six months ago. Spotify was also interested. But Apple came into the picture after the Snapchat talks in exclusive talks two months ago.

Time will tell as to when we’ll see Shazam integrated into iOS, macOS, tvOS and watchOS. Stay tuned.