Apple completes acquisition of Shazam and removes ads from app
Apple has completed the acquisition of Shazam. Earlier this month, the European Commission gave permission to the American company to take over the music recognition service. The app will still exist and will be advert free.
Apple does not say why it removes the ads from Shazam, but mentions that users will be able to use the service ‘undisturbed’ from then on. It is unknown if the ads disappear from the version for iOS and Android, although that is obvious in view of the announcement. Shazam worked with ads as an earnings model, but for Apple these revenues are probably not necessary.
The app still exists for the time being. Often after an acquisition, Apple takes the app from a company offline temporarily. This happened with, among others, Siri and Workflow, which later came back under Apple’s own name. In other cases, the app disappears from acquired companies and a technology later came back as a function. It seems obvious for Apple to integrate Shazam into Apple Music streaming service, but the manufacturer does not reveal anything about that.
Apple confirmed in December last year that it wants to take over Shazam. An acquisition price was not then announced. According to a earlier rumor Apple is prepared to put an amount of approximately 341 million euros on the table for Shazam.