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Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

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Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#141

Post by psergeant »

wonderous wrote: post #24

>> “Shazam, the 18-year-old company...” Fact that Shazam is 18-years-old made me curious, and found the following on Wikipedia: >> “Initially, in 2002, the service was launched only in the UK and was known as "2580", 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 f…

2580 was also the middle digits of the keypad, making it even easier. I made heavy use of the service back in the day.

There was another service around the same time called Any Question Answered. This was before high quality internet on phones, and you could SMS them reasonably complicated questions and (at first) get good replies. Notable successes were their getting me ownership information for a pub, and telling me which local shops had an iPad in store. Service degraded significantly over time.

Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#143

Post by couchdive »

drusepth wrote: post #121
zjaffee wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

thats what they did with the MOG turned BEATS music turned apple music in 8 months.

Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#144

Post by jdminhbg »

jonknee wrote: post #123
annexrichmond wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple Music is on Android, it could just redirect to that and live on.

Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#145

Post by revelation »

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.

It's just an easier form of speech recognition. That was plenty advanced in 2002.

(Here is Shazam in a chip from 1988:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFth9K_IvwA

Now imagine you have a magnitude better signal fidelity and 10e8 times the storage and processing power)

Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#146

Post by threeseed »

eat_veggies wrote: post #105
ryanSrich wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I thought Apple completely killed Spotify. I personally had to switch because Artists started doing exclusives with Apple only and I really couldn't justify Spotify over Apple Music, even though I much preferred Spotify's experience. I've also noticed Apple's catalogue is much larger than Spotify's. Is Spotify getting better? I'd love to switch back.

I haven't used apple music before, but spotify's ml recommenders are really impressive, and most of my favorite songs and artists were recommended to me via its "discover weekly" playlist. Its apps are super slick (cross device play/control is really handy!), especially compared to itunes. Just buy a month of premium ($10/month or $5 if you're a student) and try it.

Apple Music has recommendation playlists as well: New Music Mix, Favourites Mix and Chill Mix which all get updated weekly based on your likes/dislikes and existing music collection.

I actually find Spotify apps to be far worse than iTunes at least on iOS. And the Apple Watch app for Apple Music is really impressive.

Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#147

Post by meritt »

charlesdm wrote: post #140
meritt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they became profitable in 2016 via mostly brand advertising [1][2]. The company has nearly 400 employees according to LinkedIn. With a very conservative personnel estimate of $125k/employee/year, that's $50M alone. Let's throw on another $25M for everything else and they need to be doing at least $75M+ in annual revenue. [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2016/04/20/shazam-for-brands-user-... [2] https://www.billboar…

Perhaps I have limited understanding of running a £40m a year business, but why does an app like Shazam need 400 employees? Even if selling data and/or advertising, do they need (say) a 200 people sales team.. ?

I have no idea, it's bewildering to me frankly. Take two recent IPOs for example: MongoDB had 820 employees as of July 31st. StitchFix had 5,800 employees as of July 31st [2].

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1441816/000104746917...

[2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1576942/000119312517...

Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#148

Post by asdjasldkjkljd »

nerfhammer wrote: post #127
gorgonian wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>Why get rid of an icon that's already on everyone's phones that could be a funnel to apple music instead of spotify?

because it's not Apple

Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#149

Post by nojvek »

mceoin wrote: post #28
ChuckMcM wrote: post #14

Wow, that is an unusual exit after 6 rounds of funding. Crunchbase has it at $143M in funding up to that point. 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. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/shazam

Perhaps. Impossible to know the inside info but I can conceive of a scenario where Apple said "we are going to build this, either by acquiring you, your competitor, or starting from scratch. ... so what will it be?" Best outcome for all in that case would be acquisition. (Just ask Flux)

Shazam has patents on the Audio fingerprinting tech and their lawyers have been great at giving cease and desist order to similar tech left and right.

This could just be Apple’s way of acquiring more patents and mind share through Shazam brand.

At the level Apple is at and the hordes of cash they have in bank, it probably makes business sense to buy Shazam just for the patents.

Re: Apple Buys Shazam to Boost Apple Music

#150

Post by hyperhopper »

kgilpin wrote: post #98
adventured wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An average of 50 employees with their all-in costs for 18 years, including all the other routine business expenses = $143 million.

But presumably there was revenue.

And presumably there were a lot more costs than employees. Servers and office space for one.
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