Apple company’s purchases are usually shrouded in secrecy – it takes a few years before you can see what the company intended to do with the purchase.

When Apple bought Shazam at the end of 2017, it was more or less clear what the developers of Cupertino would do with this purchase: the music recognition service would benefit Apple Music. Indeed, that’s what happened: Shazam is now firmly integrated into Apple’s system, and the iPhone now recognizes music from the Control Center – you don’t even have to use the app.

Unlike other apps purchased by Apple, Apple hasn’t abandoned the Shazam app. Indeed, the Android version is still available through the Google Play Store.

Apple has disabled advertising in the iOS app, and the Android version is ad-free as well.

Immediately after the takeover, we assumed that Apple would benefit from the purchase mainly on the Android front, as the app also has a fairly large install base on Android smartphones.

This was directly confirmed when Apple introduced a new Shazam playlist this spring: “Shazam Predictions 2001”. The playlist is based on the millions of requests from users around the world who want to learn more about a song. Apple’s Shazam Playlist features 50 emerging artists who, according to Shazam data, are set to have a breakthrough year. Apple can now make money presenting these songs that are sure to be hits based on the data.

This is where the Android faction comes in: if Apple had shut down the Android app almost three years ago, its music analysis service would have lost the data of several hundred million users who had installed the app. application on Android.

More than music recognition

But Apple Music and iPhone music recognition are nothing compared to Apple’s WWDC announcement that Shazam’s sound recognition technology will be made available to third-party apps. Starting with iOS 15, apps will be able to use their own libraries of sounds, words, etc. using Shazam technology.

The video below shows what could be possible with this technology. Immediately after the announcement, a developer made a word counter for the spoken language. For example, you can determine how many times Tim Cook used the word “amazing” in the speech.

Surely this was ShazamKit’s ultimate fate # WWDC21 @viticci pic.twitter.com/Z9HAayeOT5

– Chad Etzel (@jazzychad)
June 10, 2021

It could be a fun tool to use, but it only shows the tip of the iceberg. Shazamkit might be capable of much more in third-party applications. During the presentation, Apple showcased a learning application that turns linearly recorded video into an interactive experience. In this example, the app can recognize if the student is asking the teacher a certain question and displays question-and-answer modules to help the student understand the material.

Shazamkit can be used to give audio content an additional interactive layer. For example, the Apple Watch could display an alert when someone rings the doorbell, and the same could be applied to other devices and noises with Shazamkit.

In short: Apple bought Shazam as a very useful feature for its Apple Music streaming service, but continued to invest and develop it for its own resources. Therefore, a gadget can become the basis of excellent applications.

This article originally appeared on Macwelt. Translation by Karen Haslam.