According to TechCrunch, Apple is looking to make a move on acquiring Shazam. Shazam is the popular music recognition app that is known for identifying a song just by listening to a few second snippet. Shazam can also identify movies, advertising, and television shows. Shazam uses a microphone to create a unique acoustic fingerprint that is searched through a database and if there is a match, it will return the song’s information.
The last round of funding valued Shazam at around $1 billion. The speculation is that Apple will will acquire Shazam at a discount for around $400 million dollars. Shazam incorporates links to iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or Groove Music to send traffic after matching a song.
Apple currently pays Shazam commission for sending traffic to the iTunes store. According to the Wall Street Journal, the majority of Shazam’s revenue came from this commission and Shazam drives about 10% of digital download sales.
It’s unsure what Apple plans on doing once acquiring Shazam. Shazam is already integrated with Siri to identify songs. Apple may try to restrict working with competing services such as Spotify and push users to Apple Music. It also comes at a critical time where Apple is looking to release HomePod in the coming year. Apple is already a bit late to the game compared to the Amazon Echo and Google Home. The deal is expected to be finalized sometime next week.