Shazam to do more than name that tune for Apple

LOS ANGELES – The music app Shazam is best known for its uncanny ability to identify songs that are already playing.

But Shazam’s new owner Apple could use that technology for more than just naming that tune. It could also fine-tune Apple Music’s feature that recommends songs for listeners, similar to the algorithmically updating playlists that streaming giant Spotify offers.

Apple on Monday said it was buying Shazam, one of the first music apps used with the iPhone when the device originally launched, to beef up its Apple Music subscription service. Apple Music is the No. 2 streaming music service, with 30 million subscribers, to No. 1 Spotify’s 60 million.

Richard Windsor, an analyst at Edison Investment Research, predicts Shazam can help strengthen Apple’s music streaming service by suggesting songs.

“This is one of the traits that makes Spotify’s service so good,” he says.

Shazam, which has been downloaded more than 1 billion times, is used more than 20 million times daily to discover music by using the smartphone microphone to identify songs. London-based Shazam has been struggling to find a business model that works in today’s world, analysts say.

Shazam and Apple didn’t announce a purchase price, but TechCrunch reported it at $400 million, a deep discount to its prior value. In January 2015, Shazam announced a new $30 million fundraising round it said valued the company at $1 billion.

Shazam is now accessible from Siri, the iPhone personal digital assistant, allowing users to identify songs without having to open the Shazam app.