
Apple is close to acquiring Shazam, sources say - rbanffy
https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/08/sources-apple-is-acquiring-music-recognition-app-shazam/
======
21
So last year I was in a big brand clothing shop and I heard a cool song. I
Shazamed it. At home searched it on YouTube.

To my shock, it was launched a few months ago and it barely had 5k views. The
shock for me was how the hell a giant clothing company (H&M if I recall
correctly) has such an underground song on.

So I started googleing around to find out how music in stores gets selected,
and long story short, this is a multi-million dollar business and there are
companies which create playlists according to your brand. These companies also
scour the world for underground artists, because you want your store to have
the best music before it's popular, so that customers perceive you as a
trendsetter.

What is the success metric for these playlist companies? One of the task of
store employees is to report how many customers they notice using Shazam in
the store.

~~~
forkLding
This should have been an opportunity for Soundcloud actually, a lot of
underground musical artists and an opportunity to connect via a large
community platform to spread word.

~~~
Disruptive_Dave
Yes, but also a ton of unlicensed music (most of which came by way of
remixes/DJ mixes), which they can't _license_ it to soundtrack cos. Spotify
owns one (major investor, created by an employee) called Soundtrack Your
Brand. Pandora offers one as well.

~~~
forkLding
Thats true actually and I've seen SoundCloud plagued by theses issues but
there's always plenty talent that get accepted such as Lil Yachty or
XXXtentacion or even Chance the Rapper who all started on SoundCloud, I think
SoundCloud has the capability to filter out the easy hits to market and
partner with

~~~
jrochkind1
If it was obvious what the "easy hits" were, I'm sure many labels would be
competing for them.

~~~
forkLding
Not really, Chance the rapper, Lil Yachty etc had huge amounts of listens etc
on SoundCloud which is why they became famous, they werent being signed by
labels despite their heavy recognition. Chance the rapper went independent,
like the thing is that labels only sort of pay attention to SoundCloud, the
major medium is still YouTube, but we even see musicians there with followings
and millions of views not being signed.

Not trying to sound ass-hurt but if theres a big platform of dedicated
listeners and theres a lot of people with millions of listens, wouldnt those
be easy hits?

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andrewgjohnson
They're going to remove my "Open with Spotify" button aren't they

~~~
colordrops
Ugh, this has become my favorite music feature of all time. I've made amazing
playlists in Spotify by using Shazam around town in cafes and clubs. It was
too good to be true.

~~~
thebigspacefuck
I use sound hound, it has the same thing.

~~~
colordrops
Awesome, thanks for the tip.

~~~
romwell
Soundhound also recognizes songs by humming. (Shazam can't)

~~~
throwaway613834
Is it as good as Shazam at finding songs? I remember trying it early and not
being impressed, but it was very brief so my sample size was too small.

~~~
jrowley
I use both regularly. SoundHound is my go to by default but I use Shazam as a
backup. Shazam is more successful normally but I like SoundHound more for
whatever reason.

------
dbranes
Relevant fact for context: the Pixel 2 shipped with a built-in music
identification feature.

[https://venturebeat.com/2017/10/19/how-googles-
pixel-2-now-p...](https://venturebeat.com/2017/10/19/how-googles-pixel-2-now-
playing-song-identification-works/)

~~~
saturdaysaint
Siri has been able to identify music (I believe using Shazam?) for 3 - 4
years. I suspect they were shopping themselves around, and Apple wanted to own
the technology enough to give them their asking price.

~~~
ehsankia
The technology Google is using here is very different. They also have active
detection on Assitant, but this one is a passive 24/7 detection. There's a
local database of the ~10k most popular songs, and it's only ~50mb [0]. It's
all done locally, and when it works (Which is very often), you just have to
look down at your phone and the song name is already there on the lockscreen
without you touching anything.

[0] [https://www.xda-developers.com/google-pixel-2-now-playing-
so...](https://www.xda-developers.com/google-pixel-2-now-playing-song-list/)

~~~
pducks32
I don't know that sounds very cool, but it really just seems like a waste of
power. I can't think of the last time I would want that.

~~~
ehsankia
As mentioned above, this is already running to do OK Google detection. It's
also not scanning 100% of the audio, as far as I understand, it analyzes
samples roughly each minute. I'm sure they would not make this a feature if it
had a big impact. From my own experience, turning this feature on or off made
no difference in battery life.

------
andy_ppp
Why would Apple pay for Shazam? It’d be totally trivial to recreate their
service if you are Apple. My guess is Shazam have patents and Apple will stop
this feature on Android, one of the most compelling features of the new pixel
is always on Shazam equivalent.

~~~
leroy_masochist
The usage-related data sets that Shazam has collected over its operational
history are likely the biggest driver of value for this deal. Think about the
insight you could gain by cross-referencing Shazam lookups with iTunes
downloads. Probably lots of insight in how certain genre fan bases intersect,
good predictive analytics on time-to-monetization of hot underground bands,
etc

~~~
pducks32
This is such a good point. Apple Music (and Spotify) are pouring money into
people who stay on the beat. To this day this is still very analog (which in
many ways is a good thing). But when your Apple or Google or whomever you must
see the power of using basic statistics to do some part of this. (You could
use ML too but that is super overkill most likely).

------
dawkins
I remember this patent threat [http://royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/07/patent-
infringement](http://royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/07/patent-infringement) and lost
any respect I had for them.

~~~
Godel_unicode
I understand being angry at patent trolls, but you are aware that Shazam isn't
one correct? They actually use the patented IP in question. Even patent
attorneys in his own country effectively told him he's likely infringing.

~~~
merb
IANAL but actually the "software" \- patent "system" in european has been
under changes since around ~2000 which means that there would not have been
any problem in releasing his code... ([https://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-
texts/html/epc/2016/e...](https://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-
texts/html/epc/2016/e/ar52.html)) (basically they are not de jure, but they
would have a hard time to actually enforce this, if it is trivially).

actually the lawyer did make a strange assumption..

well there would still be a problem if he ever want to travel outside the eu
where somebody could actually claim the infrigdement.

(Edit: in germany where I live there were patent processes about that matter
in ~2000 and the federal court ruled in favor of the patent, however after/at
the end of 2000 they basically always rejected them.)

~~~
germanier
The patentability of software has been significantly broadened since then in
Germany, just look for example at the cases Dynamische Dokumentengenerierung
and Routenplanung.

------
eggie5
Shazam is a feature not a product: index the Fourier Transform of all songs.

~~~
habosa
If you can point to any blog post that shows how one would implement Shazam,
I'd love to read it.

I read somewhere that the Pixel 2's on-device index of 10,000 popular songs
was only ~60MB. That blew my mind.

~~~
choochootrain
the original paper is quite readable:
[https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf](https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf)

shazam's value is obviously in how it scaled this method to millions of users
and songs but implementing it for yourself on a limited catalog of songs is a
couple days of work once you have the theory. in fact this was a lab project
for the intro signal processing class at berkeley that i ta'd.

~~~
epberry
Thanks for the link. I thought these things involved a lot of markov models
and gaussian functions but this is mostly just some pretty slick engineering.
The 1000x search speed seems very good.

------
peterjlee
I was looking for a way to see the lyrics of a song on Spotify. The official
Spotify help page recommended using SoundHound instead for lyrics. SoundHound
can listen to the music and show you the lyrics in real time line by line.
That was pretty cool. I wonder how Shazam and SoundHound differ and how they
make money.

~~~
iamcasen
Plug here: I used to work for SoundHound. They just have more sophisticated
deep learning going on (the cofounders wrote the original papers on deep
learning back at standford). SoundHound and Shazaam are similar on the
surface, but its all the tech underneath that's different.

Checkout Hound/Houndify: www.houndify.com

SoundHound truly is the most innovative company I have worked at so far, and
their tech is the very best I've seen, and I've worked at quite a few tech
shops by now. Their partnership with Nvidia is awesome, and I can't wait to
see their work come to fruition.

------
swyx
what is the bigger picture here with Apple's media intentions? Bought Pop Up
Archive (podcast tech), Shazam, hires a top TV exec, and that's only just this
week. Is Netflix on the radar?

~~~
ctdonath
Apple's core competency: sell flat computers.

Anything that brings you deeper into that ecosystem, feeding the likelihood of
buying another flat computer, is fair & likely game for Apple to buy or
compete with. Shazam: you hear a song, use phone to recognize it[1], download
album from Apple Music, ... you're a little more likely to stay within the iOS
ecosystem and buy another iPhone.

[1] - Recently I stopped at a traffic light; cheap chopped car pulls up with
music blaring hard edgy electronica. Something sounded interesting about it.
Yank out iPhone, run Shazam, identify song before car drives off. Download
album which is about...software engineering?!

~~~
aeontech
Well, don’t leave us hanging, what was the album? :)

~~~
ctdonath
"Brute Force" by The Algorithm: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/brute-
force/1083396755](https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/brute-force/1083396755)
reply

------
csomar
The integration via Siri is fantastic. Instead of opening the Shazam app, you
just ask Siri. In fact, there is little reason to have the app around if Apple
buys them. Just make the integration native.

\- Hey Siri, find this song.

* It's "Just Jammin" from "Grammatik"

\- Please save it

* Done!

~~~
romwell
It appears that what you wish for is already a feature on iOS, Android, and
Windows:

[http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/identify-song-cortana-
windows-1...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/identify-song-cortana-windows-10/)

Side note: WinPhones had music recognition integrated since 2014 at least, but
nobody seemed to notice or care.

~~~
kalleboo
Sony Ericsson feature phones apparently had the feature since 2006(!)
[http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20060523005400/en/Grac...](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20060523005400/en/Gracenote-
Sony-Ericsson-Partner-Provide-Mobile-Music)

~~~
dingo_bat
And it worked surprisingly well.

------
gxs
>>>Notably, though, both of the numbers we’ve heard are lower than the $1.02
billion (according to PitchBook) post-money valuation the company had in its
last funding round, in 2015.

What happens here in terms of payouts? Who gets screwed and who comes out
ahead, assuming this turns out to be true?

~~~
zwily
Well first off, the employees for sure. Then it just comes down to which
investor got better terms as to who gets screwed the least.

------
devy
I switched from Shazam to SoundHound a long time ago like many others pointed
out, SoundHound is just a better product. But geeze, money talks. With Apple's
backing, how does SoundHound compete? Perhaps Google/Amazon should snatch up
SoundHound to keep that competition going.

~~~
iamcasen
SoundHound has a number of beefy corporate partnerships already. They have a
very intelligently designed API around their deep learning models that 3rd
parties are using in their own in-house voice/music products
(www.houndify.com).

I am curious what their end-goal is though. I think they can likely stand on
their own if they play their cards right.

------
natch
I heard the Soundhound search tech under the hood was much better... but I
guess Shazam has the mindshare.

~~~
thinkythought
in my experience a/b testing shazam just has a way, way bigger database. It
would easily identify really obscure stuff like 1970s Arabic psych rock or
disco even if it wasn't even available in US online stores, and wasn't ever
sold here. Same goes for gracenote, and the other systems that tried the same
shtick

the database is the golden goose here, not the algorithm. it's similar to what
made grooveshark more fun than spotify

~~~
ksec
But then Apple already Has the Data, Apple Music and iTunes Store.

This is the Tech vs Data question, it seems people value Data a lot more.

~~~
thirdsun
You underestimate the world of music that isn't available via iTunes, Apple
Music or Spotify. It's huge. While Shazam is far from perfect for obscure
music, it surprised me at times and iTunes or streaming services aren't even
close.

------
pavlov
I always thought Spotify should buy Shazam. This article explains why they
haven't: "... the $1.02 billion post-money valuation [Shazam] had in its last
funding round, in 2015."

~~~
fredguth
Spotify bought The Echo Nest.

~~~
dingo_bat
And killed the public API :(

------
judge2020
Seemed likely since around iOS 6 or 7 they debuted Siri's music recognition
feature which was powered by Shazam.

~~~
jasongill
When I saw the headline, my first thought was "didn't they do that years ago?"

------
mkehrt
Siri can already recognize a song, and apparently this uses licensed Shazam
technology. But I never want to use that, and instead use Shazam, because I
don't want to talk to my phone in public.

I'm afraid Apple will kill the app and just want me to use Siri.

~~~
notanai
You can turn on write to Siri in the options

------
umaar
As an example, say you own a single share in Shazam, are there any ways to
figure what that one single share could be worth? - Assuming Shazam is bought
for $100 Million.

~~~
JonFish85
If you own the share (exercised the option to buy it, were granted a share,
what-have-you), you'll get a letter once the deal is finalized. If they were
bought for $100m, you'll likely get a letter saying that your share is worth
$0.

~~~
umaar
Ok thank you for explaining! Curious about the $0 bit though

~~~
martin_bech
Depends on the deal, and how many shares of Shazam has been issued. If its a
straight up 100 mill deal, and there are 1 mill shares, and you have 1 stock,
well you get 100 usd. But the deal might be structured way more advanced, or
Shazam might have a lot of debt etc.

------
bovermyer
I like Shazam. I hope Apple doesn't break it.

~~~
make3
I wonder if they'll drop Android support.

~~~
thrillgore
There's an Apple Music for Android...

~~~
00oo00
Did you ever try it? This app works so terribly on Android (really, one of the
worst apps I've ever used) that I just assume Apple makes it bad on purpose to
somehow make naive people believe Android is somehow worse.

~~~
pavlov
Glad to hear the product manager for iTunes for Windows is still employed by
Apple...

~~~
noxToken
I just thought about quite an ironic situation. A new-hire at Apple starts
their first day in a software dev position for desktop applications. They're
very excited to be creating consumer Apple products. The new-hire is
introduced to their team.

New-hire: What are we working on?

Supervisor: iTunes for Windows.

~~~
mynameisvlad
Implying iTunes for Windows is still being worked on. That's a good one.

~~~
lostlogin
It’s a sad thing when the product being dead would be the upgrade you hope
for. I’m referring to the Mac version though.

------
joelrunyon
Does anyone else have better success with SoundHound? I feel like their
product is much better.

------
sidcool
BBC quotes $400 million amount.

------
dailyvijeos
Truth in headlines:

 _Apple is close to to acquishuttering Shazam, say friends of Shazam founders
to shake the bushes for a bidding war._

------
juanmirocks
The built-in song recognition in the Pixel 2, has played wonders for Shazam's
money tunes.

------
chewbacha
Does it feel like the second gilded age to anyone else?

~~~
eggie5
what do you mean?

~~~
chewbacha
Massive consolidation of major companies and rampant inequality.

------
iMark
Basically, whaaaa...?

------
MrScoobs
Too bad, that movie with Shaq was awful.

------
YurtleTheTurtle
I thought most companies were moving towards NN for this. Doesn't Shazam rely
on a ton of audio processing and not NNs? Seems like a backward move.

~~~
colordrops
Their processing works perfectly - why would you need an NN?

~~~
Jach
NN would be more useful maybe for "recognize this song by me humming it, da-
na-na'ing its main riffs, or badly singing a few words".

~~~
colordrops
Yeah that's true. I would hope they would make that a different function
though. Google uses NNs for the android keyboard autocorrect now and it will
incorrectly change _correctly_ spelled words that I wrote 3 words back because
it decided I wanted to write a more "likely" sentence. It replaced "worry
about that" with "sorry about that". The shotgun approach of NNs in certain
scenarios is infuriatingly frustrating. Sometimes an exact match is preferable
to a probabilistic method.

