Apple’s Shazam gets music link with Apple Maps

Shazam races into action on an iPhone

Apple’s Shazam service has commenced an interesting promotional series of curated guides within Apple Maps. These show forthcoming events at music venues and clubs across London, UK.

Shazam and Maps

These guides pop up when you tap in specific localities or search for venues.

The guides also integrate to Shazam’s recently launched concert pages where you can purchase event tickets. MusicAlly reports that additional cities – and, presumably, venues, will follow London in future.

There are two particularly interesting details that cross my mind reading this:

Ticket sales

It seems an obvious next step forward for Apple to get involved in ticket sales, leveraging its music retail position.

Doing so may also provide an additional opportunity for new services. I can imagine an Apple Music Pass providing access to a number of live musical performances for an additional fee, even if the majority of that cash went to external ticketing providers.

Apple Music also recently introduced what it described as, “a new concert series with your favourite artists” called Apple Music Live.

Introducing #AppleMusicLive, a new concert series with your favorite artists.@Harry_Styles kicks it all off live from New York on May 20, only on Apple Music. https://t.co/K9ZnrDiWKT pic.twitter.com/IUx3WQ1I4f

— Apple Music (@AppleMusic) May 17, 2022

VR and AR events

It’s also fairly logical to imagine venues making use of interactive spaces such as Maps as places from which to promote virtual live performances as these begin to take place more frequently.

That’s inevitably going to include VR performances on demand, and while there’s not a great deal of interest in such interactions right now, resistance will fade in direct proportion to the quality of the experiences provided.

That Apple is considering how technology can improve and augment people’s music listening and discovery experience has never been in doubt.

The company recently acquired (2022) UK music startup AI Music for an undisclosed sum. The smaller firm was using artificial intelligence to generate dynamic soundtracks to match people’s mood.

AI is coming too

AI Music generated dynamic soundtracks that change based on user interaction. “A song in a video game could change to fit the mood, for instance, or music during a workout could adapt to the user’s intensity,” the company website (now deleted) said.

Apple Music is just one component to the company’s rapidly-growing services segment. Services earned around $75.1 billion in the fiscal year ending March 22, up from $14.5 billion in 2013.

It may stagger some to learn this part of Apple’s business outperforms IBM ($57.4b).

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