Apple Officially Removes All Ads on Shazam — And Continues to Deprioritize Spotify

Apple celebrates its Shazam acquisition by removing all ads from the music identification app.

Late last year, Apple made a relatively expensive purchase.

In a bid to build up its streaming music service, the Cupertino company acquired Shazam for $400 million.  The company said the music identification app and Apple Music were “a natural fit.”  Both shared a “passion for music discovery” and “deliver great music experiences.”

The acquisition came during a key time for the music identification app.  A financial report revealed Shazam had actually been bleeding millions thanks to flatlining user growth.

Yet, not everyone was happy with the news.

Several European members identified a potential problem with the acquisition.  These countries included Austria, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Spain, and Sweden.  They pushed for the European Commission to initiate a thorough review of the proposed deal.

Six months later, the European Commission granted “unconditional approval” to Apple’s Shazam acquisition.  The Cupertino company wouldn’t be forced to make any concessions.

Last September, Apple executives revealed they had completed the $400 million acquisition.  As such, the music identification app would eventually become an ad-free product.

Yet, as expected, the move continues an unexpected consequence for at one major streaming music rival.

Kicked to third place.

Prior to the most recent app update, users would still have to deal with ads when using Shazam.

Not anymore.

The company has completely removed ads on the newest updates of the music identification app.  This applies to both iOS and Android.

In addition – and as expected – Shazam has fully integrated Apple Music into its service.

Upon recognizing a song, users now receive an option to listen to the song first on Apple Music.  This update continues a previous strategy of de-prioritizing competitors to a secondary page.

On Android, to stream the song on a different service, users will have to tap on the three vertical white buttons on the side.  Doing so pulls up the following options, linking only to streaming music services installed on your mobile device (surprisingly, YouTube Music doesn’t count):

• Listen on Apple Music.
• Open in Deezer.
• Open in Spotify.
• Remove from My Shazam.
• Connect to Spotify.
• Share.
• View Artist.

Apple pushed that functionality several weeks ago.

To start playing on Spotify, Shazam users have to first manually connect to the service, adding their login credentials.  They’ll then have the option to automatically play back their identified tunes on Spotify.  Users will also no longer see the option to open in Apple Music or on alternate services, unless they remove their Spotify accounts from the app.