Apple’s Acquisition of Shazam Is A Knockout to Spotify

Last Monday, Apple has sealed the deal and acquired Shazam for$400 million. Shazam is an extremely popular application that helps its users identify songs, commercials, movies and TV shows through short audio clips. Apple’s spokesperson made an official statement to The Verge expressing the company’s excitement over this deal:

“We are thrilled that Shazam and its talented team will be joining Apple [...] 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 feelings is obviously mutual between the two companies according to Shazam’s official statement to The Verge as well:

“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.”

So why is this deal one of the biggest and successful deals this year? The acquisition of Shazam will improve Apple’s sound and music recognition technologies. Not only that, but it will also save Apple money spent on commissions to Shazam when it sends Apple users to iTunes store to buy media content. This is not all, if Apple ever decides to shut down Shazam, it will negatively impact other music streaming businesses, such as: Spotify and Google Play Music which Shazam helped by directing more than 1 million clicks per day.

If you think about it, the real benefit to Apple from this deal is Shazam’s newly implemented augmented reality tech. Based on visual recognition tech, the augmented reality platform was launched by Shazam to allow users scan ads, books, posters, magazines and any physical object that could then be turned into 360 degrees videos or 3D animations. This is a kickstart for Apple if they consider launching a similar technology to Google lens.