Last year Apple announced their plans to acquire Shazam which seemed like a pretty straightforward deal, however they did run into some trouble with the EU whereby some countries felt that Apple acquisition could have “adverse effects” on the competition. This made the whole deal a lot more complicated.
However Apple is going through the necessary motions to make the deal happen and have recently sought approval by regulators and according to the European Commission, they expect to have a decision by the 23rd of April. Whether or not it will be successful remains to be seen, but as 9to5Mac points out, the implications of Apple acquiring Shazam is pretty big.
It is unclear as to how much Apple will be paying for Shazam, but it isn’t so much the monetary terms, but rather the data terms in which through Shazam, Apple will gain a better understanding of music and TV shows that Shazam users are watching. Also by owning the company, Apple could effectively cut off access to that data to other companies, such as record labels who are said to use Shazam’s “dashboard” feature to identify trending songs.
That being said, the Commission’s decision by the 23rd of April might not necessarily be final either, where they might choose to launch a four month-long investigation which means that a decision could potentially be delayed until this summer.
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