Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

&gt;&gt; “Shazam, the 18-year-old company...”<p>Fact that Shazam is 18-years-old made me curious, and found the following on Wikipedia:<p>&gt;&gt; “Initially, in 2002, the service was launched only in the UK and was known as &quot;2580&quot;, as the number was the shortcode that customers dialled from their mobile phone to get music recognised. The phone would automatically hang up after 30 seconds. A result was then sent to the user in the form of a text message containing the song title and artist name.”<p>SOURCE: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Shazam_(company)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Shazam_(company)</a>

I love Shazam but honestly, if they remove integrations like &quot;Open in Spotify&quot; which seems likely, I would probably switch to using SoundHound.

Wow, that is an unusual exit after 6 rounds of funding. Crunchbase has it at $143M in funding up to that point.<p>It goes to show how the switch from radio (station directed programming) to streaming (user directed programming) has put a huge crimp in music discovery and music promotion.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crunchbase.com&#x2F;organization&#x2F;shazam" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crunchbase.com&#x2F;organization&#x2F;shazam</a>

The data that Shazam can gather must be incredibly useful to record labels, in that many people wanting to know the artist&#x2F;song is a strong signal that a track is a potential hit. Since Apple already have data about what people are actually listening to (by location), this gives them additional data about what people might want to listen to.

I&#x27;m a bit shocked that they&#x27;re paying $600M. Is Shazam even profitable? It feels like a clever tech demo from 10 years ago that&#x27;s already been replicated in search engines like Google.

Has anything replaced &quot;Into Now&quot;? I loved using it, and ever since Yahoo bought them up and then shut them down, I&#x27;ve always wondered why Shazam or Sound Hound hadn&#x27;t integrated the audio from TV shows and movies into its database. (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mashable.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;01&#x2F;31&#x2F;intonow&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mashable.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;01&#x2F;31&#x2F;intonow&#x2F;</a>)

from now on it will only identify U2 songs.

It would be nice to have the song identification feature on iOS while on standby like the Pixel 2 does.

personally I&#x27;ve found Soundhound to be much better. Havent used Shazam in a long time though.

&gt; The 18-year-old company, which has required twice the average time to deliver an exit for backers, was valued at about $1 billion when it closed its last funding round in 2015.<p>If the last round had a strong liquidity preference then it wasn&#x27;t really valued at $1 billion, and those investors might have even come out ahead.

Shazam operates on my street! Was an interesting surprise...<p>This feels like a natural acquisition to compete w&#x2F; some of Googles offering w&#x2F; the latest Pixel 2.<p>The fact Shazam is 18 years old is crazy. Pre-dates &quot;apps&quot; with the &quot;2580&quot; service and was one of the first apps on the iPhone.

Spotify remains a far better experience and product than Apple Music. Why not buy Spotify?

This is (unfortunately) a huge testament to patenting technology. I remember Shazam shutting down a lot of early iOS apps that provided music discovery services. The technology it’s self became relatively simple in the last 10 years, but their ownership of the patent has kept them on top.<p>I suspect it’s due to end soon, and they realised once it’s gone they would just become a feature of music streaming services. Good to get out now while there is still some exclusivity for Apple to milk.

I&#x27;ve used Shazam for years but lately for some reason I&#x27;ve been running into more music that it can&#x27;t identify from two separate phones (so it&#x27;s not possibly a bug limited to one device).<p>Hoping this doesn&#x27;t mean there service is degrading because I&#x27;ve really benefited from it over the years.

Can anyone think of another brand that has become generalized as an action, the same way as &quot;Googling&quot; other than Shazamed? To me &quot;Shazam it&quot; is shorthand for use whatever music ID service you have.

Recent discussion: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15881896" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15881896</a>

Probably a way to pay less taxes; they won&#x27;t have to bring EU cash to US, and get to cash it out before Brexit.<p>It&#x27;s also a nice acqui-hire; Spotify already snatched Echo Nest a few years ago, so they get to catch-up with Shazam.