Shazam, A Large Source Of Referrals For Spotify, Is Acquired By Apple

Morning Report: Apple acquires Shazam in a likely attempt to boost Apple Music. 

Apple recently confirmed its acquisition of the music and ad identifying app, Shazam, at a reported cost of $400 million. The music discovery company was previously valued at $1.02 billion after raising $30 million during its last funding round, led by Buran Venture Capital, in February.

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Shazam reportedly achieved profitability last year, which its CEO attributes to an increased focus on advertising and marketing rather than music sales.

In December 2016, Shazam announced an integration with Snapchat, allowing its users to access, download, and share music featured in snaps and stories. Snapchat reportedly expressed interest in acquiring the app itself following the apparent success of the integration.

According to Techcrunch, however, Snap’s troubled public offering in March contributed to the fallout of that conversation.

Apple, valued at about $871 billion, has acquired 11 companies  in 2017 alone. With this acquisition, the company could be looking to bolstering Apple Music, its own music streaming service, which competes with Spotify. Shazam reportedly brings in around 1 million referrals a month for both Spotify and Apple Music. Others speculate that Apple will focus on further integrating Shazam with Siri by fine tuning its use of AI and visual and audio recognition, making Siri more competitive with its Amazon and Google counterparts.

From The Crunchbase Daily:

Apple acquires Shazam

• Apple confirmed that it has acquired the popular music recognition service Shazam, in a deal reportedly valued around $400 million. Founded in 2000, London-based Shazam has attracted hundreds of millions of users and raised over $140 million in venture funding.

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