Apple is making a move to strengthen its music service with the acquisition of British music discover app Shazam.
Early reports suggest the sale could be around $400 million although one source puts its closer to $1 billion.
Shazam was founded by Chris Barton and Philip Inghelbrecht in 1999, both students of the University of California in Berkeley.
The Shazam technology uses the in-built microphone in a computer or phone to grab a sample of music being played and create an acoustic fingerprint of the sample. It then compares the sample to a central database for a match. The database has over 11 million songs recorded.
The Shazam app has been downloaded over 1 billion times.
Shazam generated about $US54 million in revenue in 2016.
Neither Shazam or Apple have made a public statement about the acquisition at this point.
