Apple has acquired Shazam, the popular music identifying service, in a deal reportedly worth "around" $400 million USD.
"We are thrilled that Shazam and its talented team will be joining Apple," said Apple in a statement issued to Variety. "Since the launch of the App Store, Shazam has consistently ranked as one of the most popular apps for iOS." The company went on to say Apple Music and Shazam are a "natural fit," teasing it has "exciting plans in store" for the future of the service.
According to TechCrunch, Snapchat and Spotify were among the other companies that expressed interest in purchasing Shazam, which has been downloaded over a billion times across a wide array of platforms.
Shazam also commented on the acquisition, saying, "We are excited to announce that Shazam has entered into an agreement to become part of Apple. Shazam is one of the highest rated apps in the world and loved by hundreds of millions of users and we can’t imagine a better home for Shazam to enable us to continue innovating and delivering magic for our users."
Neither company commented on whether or not the acquisition will impact Shazam's current functionality on non-Apple platforms.
Jordan is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @jdsirani.