Shazam has announced it has more than 100 million mobile monthly active users (MAUs), a 34 per cent increase year-over-year and a milestone achieved in the past only by an elite group of services, including the likes of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The app has been downloaded onto more than 500 million mobile devices to date and is adding users at a rate of 13 million per month. This massive user base Shazams more than 20 million times per day.
“Shazam is evolving from being a way to identify a song to a way for people to explore and connect with the world around them,” said Rich Riley, CEO. “Shazam now delivers a deeper discovery and content experience for music and TV, with retail, cinema and more coming soon. Our rapid user growth and engagement demonstrates that consumers are hungry for an immersive mobile experience.”
Also driving growth is Shazam’s continued attention to a seamless user experience. Improvements to app speed and simplicity are a central focus of the company’s product and engineering team, which includes a group of over 120 scientists and engineers. The company has been granted over 200 patents and continues to innovate aggressively. Now, most Shazams take less than four seconds, giving users access to the content they want almost instantly.
Over the past year, Shazam has accelerated its product roadmap, delivering monthly updates for iOS and Android that enhance the app’s functionality, including:
· Auto Shazam – An “always on” feature that allows users to discover the music and TV around them
· Newsfeed – Highly relevant content targeted based on what a user has Shazamed
· Streaming Integration – A simple way for users to listen to the music they discover through Shazam with leading global streaming providers
· Charts – Predict hits before anyone else and show users what songs are trending based on Shazam activity
· Shazam for Mac – Shazam’s first experience beyond mobile
As Shazam has expanded its capabilities and features, the app has seen major growth across a number of metrics:
· Shazam continues to rank as a top-rated app. According to Comscore, in the US Shazam is the No.14 iPhone app and the No. 22 app on all smartphones
· Shazam’s well-known music recognition feature drives over 400,000 digital song sales per day or approximately 7 per cent of all downloaded music on a global basis
· Growth of Shazams on TV has doubled year over year for tent pole events such as the Super Bowl or the Grammys, in some cases tripled in 2014 vs 2013. In 2014, over 30 per cent of US users have Shazamed TV
· On the advertising front, Shazam has made more than 500 television commercials Shazamable, and allows brands to connect with users through an immersive second screen environment. Most recently, Shazam introduced Resonate, an integrated sales solution that gives TV networks access to Shazam’s platform to offer advertisers increased viewer engagement
Shazam has plans to continue to aggressively increase the universe of what is Shazamable and expand its technologies into new verticals with additional launch announcements expected later this year.
This story also appears on IBC’s Content Everywhere.