“Apple has long had partnered with Shazam to power Siri’s song identification service, but now the Cupertino giant has confirmed that it is buying the company outright for a cool $400 million, a relative bargain in today’s tech dollars,” Michael Simon writes for Macworld. “On the surface, a Shazam purchase ensures that Siri will always be able to recognize the song you’re listening to and will provide a boost to Apple Music, but I think Apple has much bigger plans for the service.”
“Like everything else Apple seems to be doing now, it’s about augmented reality and machine learning,” Simon writes. “And it could be the thing that finally puts Siri back at the front of the pack.”
“It’s not just Siri on our phones: AirPods, HomePod, and Apple Watch could benefit from Shazam’s uncanny ability to name that tune,” Simon writes. “But where Shazam could really help Siri’s ears is with HomePod. Apple wants its new home speaker to “reinvent home music,” but if all it does is sound good, that’s hardly revolutionary. If Apple could leverage its Shazam acquisition to build some serious smarts into HomePod, it could be a difference maker.”
“Apple is poised to leap into the AI and AR worlds with both feet, and Shazam could be the perfect technology to vaults them back to the head of the class,” Simon writes. “And if not, well, at least Siri will be better than Assistant and Cortana at ID’ing songs.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: $400 million is petty cash for Apple and, obviously, the company has identified elements of value within Shazam. We all know by now that Apple’s uh… having some issues with HomePod. Even if all this acquisition does is virtually guarantee that Siri plays the music you want on your HomePod(s) when you want it, it’s a no-brainer acquisition.
SEE ALSO:
Apple could be missing out on the smart home if they take too much longer to get things right – December 11, 2017
Why is Apple buying Shazam? – December 11, 2017
Apple said to acquire music recognition service Shazam – December 8, 2017
Love Shazam!
Absolutely hate the advert-fest that it has become the last couple years when trying to use it, though. Annoying as hell.
Gut feeling on this acquisition is that will be good for Apple. As a shareholder, I’m happy with it: i think that it will add a lot of value to music searches. Hope that Apple will operate it as a wholly owned subsidiary, though. Brand recognition can be a powerful thing.
One thing I would like to see: Android users getting a software notification of new, impending system requirements that will require them to upgrade their hardware… to a *real* phone.
Life’s too short to be saddled with a Yugo of phones. ‘Shazam! Only on iPhone.’
Let’s see… coercion to buy an iPhone. Is that what you’re suggesting? At least you admit to being a shareholder.
One way that I would like Shazam and Siri to get better would be to allow it to work in my car.
At home, when the radio is on, I often ask “Hey Siri, what’s that tune?” and of course it listens to the music and tries to identify it. However when I’m in the car and listening to the car radio, asking Siri what the tune is will mute the car radio in favour of Siri, which means that Siri isn’t hearing any music and the tune that I was enjoying also gets silenced for a while.
I don’t know whether it’s an issue with IOS or with my cars, but I have this happening on two cars. Obviously it makes no sense at all to try and identify a tune by silencing it. The time for Siri to take over the BlueTooth on the car radio is after it has identified the track.
I’d be interested if some of you could say what happens in your cars when you ask Siri to identify a track which is playing on the car radio if your IOS device is paired with the radio.