Apple News: iPhone Maker Completes Shazam Acquisition, Removes Ads From Music App

After nearly a year of normal regulatory hurdles that come with any major tech acquisition, Apple Inc. officially owns Shazam. The Cupertino, California-based tech giant announced Monday that it had closed its acquisition of the music-identifying app, bringing in Shazam’s “hundreds of millions” of worldwide users in the process.

Shazam’s absorption by Apple will come with one major benefit for all of its users. According to Apple, Shazam will no longer display ads, meaning users can identify songs and discover new music free of any marketing.

Apple spent $400 million on Shazam in a deal originally announced in late 2017. One of the main problems holding up the deal was a European Union investigation into possible antitrust concerns.

The way Shazam works is that users activate the app when they are near an audio source playing a song they do not recognize. Shazam then identifies the song’s title and artist, a feature that Apple’s Siri virtual assistant could already do on its own. However, the app also links to streaming services where users can listen to that song on their own.

Apple’s motivation for buying Shazam may have been to point more of its users towards the growing Apple Music streaming service instead of competitors like Spotify. The E.U. thought that, along with the possibility of Apple suddenly gaining access to competitors’ customer data, would be bad for consumers.

Apple Music is locked in a heated battle with Spotify for music streaming supremacy. Spotify has more total users, but Apple Music has steadily grown to become real competition for Spotify.

Earlier in September, the E.U. approved the deal, paving the way for Monday’s announcement.

E.U. antitrust official Margrethe Vestager said her commission did not find sufficient cause to disrupt the deal in its investigation.

"After thoroughly analyzing Shazam's user and music data, we found that their acquisition by Apple would not reduce competition in the digital music streaming market,” Vestager said.

Aside from removing ads from the service, Apple’s announcement was light on specifics for Shazam’s future. The popular app will remain available on Android devices but the announcement did not contain any information about other new developments for the app.

The announcement comes hours after Sirius XM Holdings announced it reached a $3.5 million deal to acquire online streaming service Pandora Media.