Apple has confirmed they have purchased Shazam

This could be a wild ride, Apple has confirmed today that they have purchased audio identification service Shazam.

The deal has been confirmed, but the price hasn’t, though ReCode has placed a figure of $400 million USD on the deal.

No plans for what Apple has planned for the company, or whether they will continue to offer the app in both Google Play and the iOS app store, or if they will remove it. An Apple representative told The Verge:

We are thrilled that Shazam and its talented team will be joining Apple. Apple Music and Shazam are a natural fit, sharing a passion for music discovery and delivering great music experiences to our users. We have exciting plans in store, and we look forward to combining with Shazam upon approval of today’s agreement.

With the launch of the Pixel 2 phones, Google showed what a neat feature a phone identifying ambient music around you could be with the Now Playing, an on-device music ID service that can, if switched on tell you on the lock-screen or in the notification panel what song is on the radio, or being played at an event. Apple could possibly be playing catch-up with the acquisition of Shazam, perhaps we’ll see something like this in the next iOS build.

Apple currently only offers one Android app: Apple Music, a subscription based music service, whether they’ll continue to let Android users access Shazam is another question. Still, if you need some music identified, there is always SoundHound, a similar service with (IMHO) just as good identification as Shazam and it has a freemium model with some ads that works just as well.