5 thoughts on “Why Apple bought Shazam”

1. I think this is a great example of Apple buying useful technology instead of developing it itself. Looking forward to integrating it with Siri, for example.

2. …like it has been for years?

3. A couple things:

   1. I can’t think of any way to transfer loyal Shazam users to loyal Apple Music users. That just seems a bogus argument to me.
   2. Apple is not going to keep the advertising part of the Shazam business. Current App Store search result ads aside, it’s not in Apple’s nature to sell their customers’ eyeballs or attention.
   3. Apple’s not going to sell the data. I’m not even sure they’ll mine it themselves, not without asking people to opt in again.

4. I wish they can leverage these AR capabilities to overlay UI and/or relevant information onto screens. Can you imagine turn-by-turn directions projected on windshields as Apple Maps recognizes where you are on the road? It might even know there is a stop sign for this particular crossroad, even when the trees on the sidewalk is obscuring it, or help you recognize which street you’re on in the middle of a snowstorm which covers the signs completely.

   There are of course more viable applications in AR, but just those alone off the top of my head will be very helpful!

5. HA!