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Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

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Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#121

Post by drusepth »

zjaffee wrote: post #92
gorgonian wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is probably going to kill the app. They probably just bought it for the tech.

It's odd that they didn't try to purchase soundhound then. The company has more evolved tech, and also has voice recognition services beyond just music through houndify.

If they bought soundhound for the tech to bake into their own service, they'd be competing with Shazam. If they bought Shazam for the tech to bake into their own service, soundhound would just exist as an alternative. Seems like an attempt to buy the "name brand" to get tech and inherently beat the competition at the same time.

Note: I've never heard of soundhound though, so it might be popular in some places. Shazam is like the name-brand of music recognition though, to the extent of being a verb.

Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#122

Post by xapata »

amelius wrote: post #70
xapata wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (removed explanation because it seems not appreciated) I think describing the reaction as lack-of-appreciation is a bit misleading. Perhaps disbelief might be a better description.

For the wrong reasons. See my response.

Since you deleted the original comment, it's hard to evaluate it. I think you should have left it there.

Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#123

Post by jonknee »

annexrichmond wrote: post #100
gorgonian wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is probably going to kill the app. They probably just bought it for the tech.

What basis do you have for that? When they bought Workflow they didn't kill it.

Workflow wasn't a popular Android application that sends users to a competing service though... I could see the app live on iOS with Spotify integration stripped out, but seriously doubt it has a future on Android.

Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#124

Post by yoz-y »

DoodleBuggy wrote: post #119

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

Apple does not seem to like to do big purchases. Even though they probably could. Spotify is not (yet) profitable so they would probably have to hike up the prices. At this point they are probably better off doing their deals on their own and slowly catch up.

Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#125

Post by coldtea »

guelo wrote: post #120
ams6110 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that time, I wonder if there was any technology actually identifiying the song, or if it was a big mechanical turk sort of operation.

Amazon's Mechanical Turk service launched in 2005.

The notion of a "mechanical turk" however, and of operations putting a facade on humans doing the work -- to which the parent alluded to ("a big mechanical turk sort of operation") and not specifically Amazon's variety , has been known and used for centuries.

Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#126

Post by rapind »

ams6110 wrote: post #113
dsnuh wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the first time I Shazamed a song. It was during the flip phone era and it was honestly the most magical thing to me at time. I had always wanted something like this, and here it was at my fingertips.

At that time, I wonder if there was any technology actually identifiying the song, or if it was a big mechanical turk sort of operation.

https://youtu.be/xm4mDO4XGIE

Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#127

Post by nerfhammer »

gorgonian wrote: post #27
kin wrote: post #23

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

Apple is probably going to kill the app. They probably just bought it for the tech.

Apple would have no problem implementing something similar.

It's the brand, mindshare and music store/service lead gen that's more difficult to replicate. Why get rid of an icon that's already on everyone's phones that could be a funnel to apple music instead of spotify?

Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#128

Post by toomanybeersies »

guelo wrote: post #120
ams6110 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that time, I wonder if there was any technology actually identifiying the song, or if it was a big mechanical turk sort of operation.

Amazon's Mechanical Turk service launched in 2005.

The concept of the "Mechanical Turk" has been around for over 200 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk

Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#129

Post by nerfhammer »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #47
rjett wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question from a non-Silicon Valley professional: Where does all that money go? Obviously, some [likely big] portion of it is still on the balance sheet, but does an app like Shazam really cost that much in engineering talent to update it and iterate it and server space to keep it running?

It varies quite a bit from company to company. They were founded in 2001 so I expect most of it was salary and physical plant. The business is/was connecting resale opportunities to brands and artists[1] so you'll have a fairly significant sales and marketing effort although typically you will pay sales people for performance so their compensation will track revenue. But to give you some things to think about, if you…

I don't know what the share of revenue was, but they knew what everyone in the world was listening to live and they were selling that data:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/the-sha...

Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#130

Post by nerfhammer »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #52
StephenMelon wrote: post #16

The data that Shazam can gather must be incredibly useful to record labels, in that many people wanting to know the artist/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.

Forbes, or was it BusinessWeek, actual did an article on that (i.e., selling data to record labels) a year or so ago. If I get a moment I'll try to track it down later.

Maybe this? https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/the-sha...
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