Apple has announced the acquisition of Shazam, one of the world's most popular music recognition mobile applications.
Shazam has been downloaded over 1 billion times around the world and users identify songs using the Shazam app over 20 million times each day. Shazam was launched in the Windows Marketplace in 2009 and since then it has been one of the most popular music recognition apps.
This acquisition is good news for the users as now Shazam’s services will be ad-free, according to the company.
Shazam is available both on Android and iOS and allows users to identify a song playing on the radio or any sound output device. It listens to a fragment of the music and matches it to the millions of songs in its database.
Built by Shazam Entertainment Ltd, a British app development company, Shazam helps people discover, interact with and share video, audio or printed content across devices.
Currently, Shazam is the seventh most popular music app on Apple’s App Store.
According to earlier media reports, Apple struck a deal with Shazam for a likely sum of nearly $400 million. Despite being a popular app, the company hasn’t found a way to make money off the app.
Apple is hoping that Shazam’s popularity will help it gain more Apple Music subscribers which at the beginning of the year stood at 36 million.
(With inputs from IANS)
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