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Apple Buys Shazam To Boost Apple Music (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple agreed to acquire music-identification service Shazam, taking ownership of one of the first apps to demonstrate the power of the iPhone, recognizing songs after hearing just a few bars of a tune. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but a person familiar with the situation said Apple is paying about $400 million for the U.K.-based startup. That would be one of Apple's largest acquisitions ever, approaching the size of its 1996 purchase of Next Computer Inc. which brought co-founder Steve Jobs back to the company. That transaction would be worth more than $600 million in today's dollars. The Shazam app uses the microphone on a smartphone or computer to identify almost any song playing nearby, then points users to places they can listen to it in future, such as Apple Music or Google's YouTube.
"Apple Music and Shazam are a natural fit, sharing a passion for music discovery and delivering great music experiences to our users," Apple said in an emailed statement on Monday. "We have exciting plans in store, and we look forward to combining with Shazam upon approval of today's agreement. Since the launch of the App Store, Shazam has consistently ranked as one of the most popular apps for iOS," Apple also said. "Today, it's used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, across multiple platforms." The acquisition would help Apple embed that capability more deeply into its music offerings. The company's digital assistant Siri gained Shazam integration in 2014, so users could ask it what song is playing in the background.
"Apple Music and Shazam are a natural fit, sharing a passion for music discovery and delivering great music experiences to our users," Apple said in an emailed statement on Monday. "We have exciting plans in store, and we look forward to combining with Shazam upon approval of today's agreement. Since the launch of the App Store, Shazam has consistently ranked as one of the most popular apps for iOS," Apple also said. "Today, it's used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, across multiple platforms." The acquisition would help Apple embed that capability more deeply into its music offerings. The company's digital assistant Siri gained Shazam integration in 2014, so users could ask it what song is playing in the background.
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"
Hopefully this will make the Siri integration even tighter. I would love to drive home and be able to ask Siri to list all of the songs I heard on the radio during drive-time. It's 2017 for God's sake, why do I have to ask her to name that tune for each individual song!?
Please get Sinbad on board.
How is it a startup if it was founded in 1999? I remember using it on my Nokia phone (dial 2580) back in the early 2000's
Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
Their only real competition is SoundHound... I wonder what party will buy that company out.
And I'm done with Shazam.
Although I'm sure Apple does want Shazam for a number of reasons, one big one I could see is that now other companies and platforms will not be able to use Shazam.
Or maybe some other companies were thinking of buying Shazam, and then Apple would have been possibly in trouble without the ability for Siri to recognize songs (which has used Shazam behind the scenes for quite a while).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Every time I see a news reference to Shazam I wonder why the big red cheese made the headlines. He's not exactly one of the DC Comics A-listers.
So Apple paid $400 million to purchase a company that won't add additional functionality to iPhones (as you could already use Shazam for free) compared to Google who wrote their own AI to do the same thing without sending any data back to Google. I'm not sure I see a reason behind that price tag.
Can someone explain?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur. . . . . . . .
What about Beats for $3.2 billion? Makes a $400 million acquisition seem pretty small...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
SIRI: "No, but hum a few bars and I'll play it!"
Google who wrote their own AI to do the same thing without sending any data back to Google
That's only true for 17,300 songs - basically the popular ones.. For anything else, it's taking a trip to the internet. Also just because it CAN recognize the song from the local database, does not at all mean it's not going to tell Google you asked and what it found.
If for no other reason than Shazam's really good and very through recognition database and machine learning expertise in processing audio, it's probably well worth a mere 400 million.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think in the 20 times I've tried, it's only gotten 3-4 song titles correct.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Can't wait to see how apple ruins it. Maybe all the song names with unneeded Unicode characters will start displaying all fucked up.
Maybe it will be faster than their bloated app with all of its social features and ads that often takes so long to load that the song has already ended.
So Apple paid $400 million to purchase a company that won't add additional functionality to iPhones (as you could already use Shazam for free)
Shazam, by itself alone as an app (and it's corresponding cloud-based server doing the data analysis), is of no direct value for Apple, indeed.
The thing which is extremely interesting for Apple, is the tyapical users' workflow.
The user goes to some party, hears a nice ctachy song, wants to what it is.
Currently, the user will fire up Shazam or Sounhound (i.e.: record a bit of the song (or hum it), send the sound bit to the server, and get an answer).
- "The song is ${XyZ} by ${AbC}."
The next thing the user would like is to put this song aside. In theory, they could write the name into a note on the smartphone, but most apps offers the possibility to look into music providers (e.g.: Soundhound links into spotify, soundcloud an a few others. Shazaam is mentioned to handle Youtube, iTunes, etc.)
That's usually how these apps manage to get a bit of money (in terms of kicks backs for sending in users to paying commercial music distribution).
*That's* what's interesting for Apple. Instead of an external 3rd party app, that points further into a dozen of diverse services, by acquiring Shazaam, Apple can slowly tune it and optimize it into bringing as many apple paying customers as possible.
They can leverage music identification services as a a form of free advertisement for music sold on iTunes.
"- Hey Siri, what's this song ?
- It's ${XyZ} by ${AbC}. Would like me to add it to your iTunes collection.
Also, users who likes also like their song ${WvT} and also like the similar band ${DeF}"
( "Ka-Ching !" is the sound you now hear at Apple )
If doing this monetization correctly, it's going to be worth much more than 400 million to Apple.
Paying 400 million for a technology that (Apple thinks) will bring more than 400 in : seems like a bargain to them.
The fact that Google can recognize a few songs without off-loading the processing to the cloud : great, but Apple has no interest in that.
They need the user to be online anyway, because the thing which happens right next and which will bring money to Apple requires them to be online (and connected to Apple's music shop).
The executive taking the buyout decision have no interest in the exact details of how the technology is implemented (that's details for the weird bearded guys wearing pocket protectors that they underpay). What interests them is how much money they thing this could bring in, and currently, they see Shazaam as a wonderful way to funnel more users into buying music.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
> one of the first apps to demonstrate the power of the iPhone
How is an app demonstrating "the power of the iPhone" when it's just recording from the microphone for a few seconds, uploading the sample to a server, and displaying the response it got back? All the hard work is done server-side.
"Demonstrating the power of the iPhone" would be doing that without any sort of internet connection.