TechCrunch reported that Apple is in talks to buy the popular song recognition app Shazam as the tech giant tries to compete with streaming leader Spotify.
The technology news site, quoting unnamed sources, said that the deal could be announced on Monday, but the financial terms are not yet clear.
A spokeswoman for Apple declined to comment.
Since its founding in 1999, Shazam has offered a high-tech solution to listeners´ longtime agony over not recognizing music on the radio or in bars. It lets users identify songs through their phones´ microphones.
Shazam, which is based in London, announced last year that it had reached one billion smartphone downloads.
However, it only recently started to see profitability by incorporating advertisements and partnering with other tech firms, including Spotify and Apple, to which it refers traffic.
It would remain to be seen how Apple would integrate Shazam, which also faces competitors like SoundHound.
Apple, which revolutionised online music with iTunes, launched Apple Music in 2015 as the market turned to streaming, which offers unlimited on-demand listening.
Apple said in September that the service had more than 30 million subscribers — a rapid rise but still trailing industry leader Spotify, which said it had 60 million paying users as of July and 80 million more on its free tier.
Stockholm-based Spotify announced earlier Friday that it and China´s Tencent were taking minority stakes in each other, which is a likely sign of Spotify´s growth ambitions in the world´s most populous country, where it is not yet present. (AFP)
