Apple has purchased British song-recognition app Shazam for a reported £300m, in what is believed to be one of the tech giant's biggest deals ever.
The app, which analyses audio clips to identify songs, TV shows, films or adverts in seconds, was last valued at £750m in 2015.
Speaking about the deal, Apple said: 'Since the launch of the App Store, Shazam has consistently ranked as one of the most popular apps for iOS. Today, it’s used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, across multiple platforms.
'Apple Music and Shazam are a natural fit, sharing a passion for music discovery and delivering great music experiences to our users.
'We have exciting plans in store, and we look forward to combining with Shazam upon approval of today’s agreement.'
A spokesman for Shazam added: '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.'
Since it was founded in 1999, the app has been downloaded more than 1bn times and is used by more than 100 million people each month to identify and discover music.
The app, which analyses audio clips to identify songs, TV shows, films or adverts in seconds, was last valued at £750m in 2015.
Speaking about the deal, Apple said: 'Since the launch of the App Store, Shazam has consistently ranked as one of the most popular apps for iOS. Today, it’s used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, across multiple platforms.
'Apple Music and Shazam are a natural fit, sharing a passion for music discovery and delivering great music experiences to our users.
'We have exciting plans in store, and we look forward to combining with Shazam upon approval of today’s agreement.'
A spokesman for Shazam added: '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.'
Since it was founded in 1999, the app has been downloaded more than 1bn times and is used by more than 100 million people each month to identify and discover music.
