Apple To Buy Shazam

London-based Shazam was founded as an SMS service in 1999 and is capable of identifying music, television shows, films and adverts based on a short audio or video clip. TechCrunch, which was first to report the acquisition talks last week, pegged the price at around $400 million.

It is also reported by Sunday Times that the investors of Shazam would not be happy wit this valuation as the company was valued over 1 billion in 2015.

Apple is reportedly buying music recognition app Shazam for $400m in cash, signalling AI has a role to play in the future of music.

If all goes according to the rumours today, Apple will announce the acquisition of the nifty music identification app, Shazam.

Neither Apple nor Shazam have commented on the speculation, but the deal likely would make sense for both parties. No doubt, further integration with Siri will be at the top of the list.

Apple and Shazam already had a close relationship.

Apple said Shazam would be a “natural fit” with its Apple Music streaming service and it would help users discover new songs.

It will also be interesting to see if the app will only be made available to iOS devices, forcing Android users to look elsewhere for song identifying apps. It is not now clear what changes will be made to the app after acquisition.

Shazam is a United Kingdom outfit so Apple can use all the cash it has stockpiled out of the USA to avoid paying tax.

So why is Apple sniffing around Shazam?

Shazam’s conversations with Apple began the following month, and they became exclusive about two months ago. Unlike Apple’s Siri, Google is offering the music discovery service on its own. Namely, how much is Apple paying for it, and what, if any, changes will come to the service as a result.