AFP, NEW YORK:  Apple said Monday that it would buy leading song recognition app Shazam in a fresh bid to secure an

edge in the intensifying battle of streaming services.

Apple, whose streaming service has rapidly grown but still has only half the paid subscribers of Spotify, said that Shazam has consistently been one of the most popular items on its App Store.

The two companies did not disclose financial terms. The technology news sites Recode and TechCrunch, quoting unnamed sources, both put the deal at around $400 million.

The market signaled its approval, with Apple share prices jumping 2.0 per cent, well outpacing the 0.2 per cent rise on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

“Apple Music and Shazam are a natural fit, sharing a passion for music discovery and delivering great music experiences to our users,” Apple said in a statement.

London-based Shazam said in a separate statement: “We can’t imagine a better home for Shazam to enable us to continue innovating and delivering magic for our users.”

Shazam, which was founded in 1999 in the early age of online music, has offered a solution to a longtime agony of listeners—putting a name to elusive songs. With a click, the app identifies tracks playing on the radio, at parties or as background music.

But Shazam has struggled to find a way to make money off its technology, even as it said that it had reached one billion downloads on smartphones last year.

Shazam only recently announced it had become profitable, thanks to advertising and steering traffic to other sites such as Spotify and Apple Music.

The technology is also no longer quite as novel, with Shazam facing rivals such as SoundHound and with smartphones capable of ever more advanced recognition functions.