Apple has completed its acquisition of music discovery and recognition service Shazam. The Cupertino-based tech company announced its acquisition of Shazam through a press release, stating that the music identifying app will soon become ad free for all users. Apple has been negotiating the purchase of Shazam since last year and the acquisition has finally come to pass after the deal faced resistance from the European Commision which was concerned that the acquisition could reduce choice for users’ of music streaming services and Apple would obtain access to commercially sensitive data about customers of its competitors for the provision of music streaming services in the European Economic Area.
The now completed takeover of Shazam has reportedly cost Apple close to $400 million, although the terms of the acquisition were not officially revealed. “Apple and Shazam have a long history together. Shazam was one of the first apps available when we launched the App Store and has become a favourite app for music fans everywhere,” said Oliver Schusser, Apple’s Vice President of Apple Music. “With a shared love of music and innovation, we are thrilled to bring our teams together to provide users even more great ways to discover, experience and enjoy music,” he added. Shazam already put out Apple Music links to identified songs on its service and with the new development, one can expect the Shazam app to be more well integrated with Apple’s music streaming service. Shazam was founded back in 1999 and in 2013, it became one of the top ten most popular apps in the world. Since then, the app has been downloaded over 1 billion times and according to Apple, users identify songs using the Shazam app over 20 million times each day.
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