Abracadabra Shazam!



I remember encountering Shazam sometime in the early naughties. They’d already been around for a while (I’ve read their setup date as variously 1999 and 2004 in the mainstream media, who still don’t seem able to check a fact but will itherwise provide opinions on anything and everything).


But who cares? The reality is that they are a British company with genuinely bleeding edge technology with little commercial application that has swallowed up tens if not hundreds of millions of funding over 15 years or more and have now exited at a valuation that would make a US startup laugh and which has probably washed out all but the most recent investors.


A British company selling itself for $400m to Apple might seem like a massive result. The reality is that this was a score draw...