Shazam is an
application that can identify
music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
,
movies
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
,
advertising
Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...
, and
television shows
A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, or cable, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are typically placed betw ...
, based on a short sample played and using the microphone on the device.
It was created by London-based Shazam Entertainment, and has been owned by
Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...
since 2018. The software is available for
Android,
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
,
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
,
Wear OS
Wear OS (also known simply as Wear and formerly Android Wear) is a version of Google's Android operating system designed for smartwatches and other wearables. By pairing with mobile phones running Android version 6.0 "Marshmallow" or newer, or ...
,
watchOS
watchOS is the operating system of the Apple Watch, developed by Apple Inc. It is based on iOS, the operating system used by the iPhone, and has many similar features. It was released on April 24, 2015, along with the Apple Watch, the only dev ...
and as a
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS ...
extension.
The original UK developer of the app, Shazam Entertainment Limited, was founded in 1999 by Chris Barton, Philip Inghelbrecht, Avery Wang, and Dhiraj Mukherjee.
On September 24, 2018, the company was acquired by Apple for a reported $400 million.
Overview
![Target zone2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Target_zone2.png)
Shazam identifies
songs
A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetition ...
using an
audio fingerprint
An acoustic fingerprint is a condensed digital summary, a fingerprint, deterministically generated from an audio signal, that can be used to identify an audio sample or quickly locate similar items in an audio database.
Practical uses of a ...
based on a time-frequency graph called a
spectrogram
A spectrogram is a visual representation of the spectrum of frequencies of a signal as it varies with time.
When applied to an audio signal, spectrograms are sometimes called sonographs, voiceprints, or voicegrams. When the data are represen ...
. It uses a smartphone or computer's built-in microphone to gather a brief sample of audio being played. Shazam stores a catalogue of audio fingerprints in a database. The user tags a song for 10 seconds and the application creates an audio fingerprint. Shazam works by analyzing the captured sound and seeking a match based on an acoustic fingerprint in a database of millions of songs. If it finds a match, it sends information such as the artist, song title, and album back to the user. Some implementations of Shazam incorporate relevant links to services such as
iTunes
iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...
,
Apple Music
Apple Music is a music, audio and video streaming service developed by Apple Inc. Users select music to stream to their device on-demand, or they can listen to existing playlists. The service also includes the Internet radio stations Apple M ...
,
Spotify
Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active us ...
,
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
, or
Groove Music
Groove Music (formerly Xbox Music or Zune Music Pass) is a discontinued audio player software application included with Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.
The app is also associated with a now-discontinued music streaming service, Groov ...
.
Shazam can identify music being played from any source, provided that the background noise level is not high enough to prevent an acoustic fingerprint being taken, and that the song is present in the software's database.
As well as the free app, the company has released a paid app called Shazam Encore. In September 2012, the service was expanded to enable TV users in the US to identify featured music, access cast information, and get links to show information online, as well as added social networking capabilities.
In 2014, Shazam redesigned their app and added additional features.
Compatible devices
Shazam runs on
Android,
Wear OS
Wear OS (also known simply as Wear and formerly Android Wear) is a version of Google's Android operating system designed for smartwatches and other wearables. By pairing with mobile phones running Android version 6.0 "Marshmallow" or newer, or ...
,
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
,
watchOS
watchOS is the operating system of the Apple Watch, developed by Apple Inc. It is based on iOS, the operating system used by the iPhone, and has many similar features. It was released on April 24, 2015, along with the Apple Watch, the only dev ...
,
BlackBerry OS
BlackBerry OS is a discontinued proprietary mobile operating system developed by Canadian company BlackBerry Limited for its BlackBerry line of smartphone handheld devices. The operating system provides multitasking and supports specialized i ...
, and
Windows Phone
Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design la ...
systems. Shazam is also available for
MacOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
, as a desktop application that, when enabled, runs in the background and automatically recognises any song played on or near the computer.
Apple's launch of iOS 8 in September 2014 came with the integration of Shazam into Apple's Siri function.
History
Shazam Entertainment Limited was founded in 1999 by Chris Barton and Philip Inghelbrecht, who were students at
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
and worked at a London-based internet consulting firm called Viant. In need of a digital signal processing specialist, the founding team then hired Wang, who had received his
PhD from
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
. It first made a profit in 2016, 17 years after launch.
2002–2006: Early days of the service
Initially, in 2002, the service was launched only in the UK and was known as "2580", as the number was the
shortcode
codes, or short numbers, are short digit sequences, significantly shorter than telephone numbers, that are used to address messages in the Multimedia Messaging System (MMS) and short message service (SMS) systems of mobile network operators ...
that customers dialled from their mobile phone to get music recognized.
The phone would automatically hang up after 30 seconds. A result was then sent to the user in the form of a text message containing the song title and artist name. At a later date, the service also began to add hyperlinks in the text message to allow the user to download the song online.
Shazam launched in the US on the
AT&T Wireless
AT&T Mobility LLC, also known as AT&T Wireless and marketed as simply AT&T, is an American telecommunications company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T Inc. and provides wireless services in the United States. AT&T Mobility is the thi ...
network in 2004 in a joint offering with Musicphone, a now defunct San Francisco-based company. The service was free at launch with AT&T saying that it would charge $0.99 for each use in future.
In 2006, users were charged £0.60 per call or had unlimited use for £4.50 a month, as well as an online service to keep track of all tags.
[
]
2006–2017: Smartphone app and expansion
Shazam first became available as an app in 2006 exclusively on the Amp'd Mobile
Amp'd Mobile was a cellular phone service launched in the United States in late 2005, and in Canada in early 2007. The company was a Mobile Virtual Network Operator offering 3G voice and data services over the Verizon Wireless EV-DO network, incl ...
cellular service.
Shazam for iPhone debuted on July 10, 2008, with the launch of Apple's App Store. The free app enabled users to launch iTunes and buy the song directly, although the service struggled to identify classical music.
Shazam launched on the Android platform later that year, and on the Windows Mobile Marketplace a year later. Encore first appeared for iPhone in November 2009.
In December 2009, Shazam was downloaded ten million times in 150 countries across 350 mobile operators. Around eight percent of users purchased a track after it was identified by the service. Its success led to a funding round from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneurs ...
in October 2009. In January 2011, Apple announced that Shazam was the fourth most downloaded free app of all time on the App Store, while rival SoundHound
SoundHound Inc. is an audio and speech recognition company founded in 2005. It develops speech recognition, natural language understanding, sound recognition and search technologies. Its featured products include Houndify, a Voice AI developer p ...
had the top paid iPad app.
In August 2012, Shazam announced the service had been used to tag five billion songs, TV shows and advertisements. In addition, Shazam claimed to have over 225 million users across 200 countries. A month later, the service claimed to have more than 250 million users with two million active users per week. In 2014, the app announced it had 100 million monthly active users and over 500 million downloads. In October 2014, Shazam announced its technology had been used to identify 15 billion songs.
The Shazam app was listed among Techland's 50 Best Android Applications for 2013.
In August 2014, Shazam announced there would be no more updates for Shazam(RED) after August 7.
Apple's launch of iOS 8
iOS 8 is the eighth major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc., being the successor to iOS 7. It was announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 2, 2014, and was released on September 17, ...
in September 2014 came with the integration of Shazam into Apple's virtual assistant Siri
Siri ( ) is a virtual assistant that is part of Apple Inc.'s iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, tvOS, and audioOS operating systems. It uses voice queries, gesture based control, focus-tracking and a natural-language user interface to answer questio ...
.
In February 2013, Shazam announced a partnership with the music store Beatport
Beatport is an American electronic music-oriented online music store owned by LiveStyle. The company is based in Denver, Los Angeles, and Berlin. Beatport is oriented primarily towards DJs, selling full songs as well as resources that can be used ...
, adding its library of electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...
to the service. On April 3, 2013, Shazam announced an exclusive partnership with Saavn
JioSaavn is an Indian online music streaming service and a digital distributor of Hindi, English, Malayalam, Bengali, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Bhojpuri and other regional Indian music around the world. Since it was founded in 2007 as Saavn, th ...
, an Indian online music streaming service. The deal added nearly 1 million songs in Indian languages to Shazam's database. In July 2014, Shazam announced a partnership with Rdio that allows Shazam users to stream full songs within the app.
In May 2015, Shazam was launched on Wear OS
Wear OS (also known simply as Wear and formerly Android Wear) is a version of Google's Android operating system designed for smartwatches and other wearables. By pairing with mobile phones running Android version 6.0 "Marshmallow" or newer, or ...
(formerly Android Wear).
Rich Riley joined Shazam as CEO in April 2013. after over 13 years at Yahoo!
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...
Riley replaced Andrew Fisher, who was hired from Infospace
Infospace, Inc. was an American company that offered private label search engine, online directory, and provider of metadata feeds. The company's flagship metasearch site was Dogpile and its other notable consumer brands were WebCrawler and MetaC ...
into the CEO role in 2005 to strengthen industry partnerships and grow the userbase. Fisher is now executive chairman.
In addition to music, Shazam has announced collaborations with partners across television, advertising and cinema. In May 2014, National CineMedia
National CineMedia (NCM) is an American cinema advertising company. NCM displays ads to U.S. consumers in movie theaters, online and through mobile technology. NCM presents cinema advertising across a digital in-theater network, consisting of the ...
announced a partnership with Shazam to incorporate Shazam into FirstLook pre-show segments that run in Regal, AMC
AMC may refer to:
Film and television
* AMC Theatres, an American movie theater chain
* AMC Networks, an American entertainment company
** AMC (TV channel)
** AMC+, streaming service
** AMC Networks International, an entertainment company
*** ...
and Cinemark cinemas. In November 2014, NCM and Shazam announced that NCM FirstLook pre-shows are now Shazam enabled on over 20,000 movie screens across the United States.
In August 2014, Shazam announced the launch of Resonate, a sales product that allows TV networks to access its technology and user base. The news included the announcement of partnerships with AMC, A&E, Dick Clark Productions
Dick Clark Productions (DCP, stylized in lowercase as dick clark productions or dcp) is an American multinational television production company founded by radio and TV host Dick Clark.
The studio primarily produces award shows and other music en ...
and Fuse
Fuse or FUSE may refer to:
Devices
* Fuse (electrical), a device used in electrical systems to protect against excessive current
** Fuse (automotive), a class of fuses for vehicles
* Fuse (hydraulic), a device used in hydraulic systems to protect ...
.
Shazam announced a 2015 partnership with Sun Broadcast Group on Shazam for Radio, a new offering that will allow radio stations to push customised content to listeners on Sun Broadcast's over 8,000 radio stations in the US.
In December 2016, Shazam announced a partnership with social media application Snapchat
Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before the ...
. The new feature comes as part of the latest Snapchat update and integration with Shazam, which allows Snapchat users to use Shazam's music recognition technology by pressing and holding the camera screen.
2018–present: Subsidiary of Apple Inc.
In December 2017, Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...
announced it would be acquiring Shazam for a reported $400 million (£300 million). On April 23, 2018, the European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...
stated that it would be reviewing the acquisition. The European Commission approved the acquisition on September 6, 2018 and the deal was completed on September 24, 2018.
Funding
As of September 2012, Shazam had raised US$32 million in funding. In July 2013, América Móvil
América Móvil is a Mexican telecommunications corporation headquartered in Mexico City, Mexico. It is the 7th largest mobile network operator in terms of equity subscribers and one of the largest corporations in the world. América Móvil is a ...
invested US$40 million in Shazam for an undisclosed share. In March 2014, Shazam confirmed another US$20 million in new funding, raising the total value of the company to US$500 million. The company's earlier backers include European venture capital
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...
firm DN Capital
DN Capital is an international venture capital firm headquartered in London that invests in technology companies. It was founded in 2000 by Nenad Marovac and Steve Schlenker, two Harvard Business School classmates.
Investments and exits
DN Capi ...
, which invested in Shazam in 2004.
Patent infringement lawsuit
In May 2009, Tune Hunter accused Shazam of violating , which covers music identification and purchase in a portable device. Shazam settled the case in January 2010.
See also
* ACRCloud
* Axwave
Axwave, Inc. (acquired by Samba TV, announced in August 2019) was an international software development company that developed a proprietary fingerprinting-based automatic content recognition (ACR) technology. Axwave was founded by Damián Scavo ...
* ''Beat Shazam
''Beat Shazam'' is an American television musical game show which premiered on Fox on May 25, 2017. The show is hosted by Jamie Foxx, who is also an executive producer on the show along with Jeff Apploff (who created the show with Wes Kauble). O ...
'', a television game show where contestants compete to identify songs faster than the app
* Bing Music
Bing Audio (also known as Bing Music) is a music recognition application created by Microsoft which is installed on Windows Phones running version 7.5 and above, including Windows Phone 8. On Windows Phone 8.1, and in regions where the Microsoft ...
identification
* Firefly by Amazon
* Gracenote
Gracenote, Inc. is a company owned by Nielsen Holdings that provides music, video and sports metadata and automatic content recognition (ACR) technologies to entertainment services and companies, worldwide. Formerly CDDB ("Compact Disc Data Base ...
* Sony TrackID
TrackID was a mobile music and audio search engine for Sony Ericsson (now Sony Mobile) feature phones, Android devices and some Sony television sets. TrackID was developed by Sony Mobile and allowed users to identify music using Gracenote's musi ...
* SoundHound
SoundHound Inc. is an audio and speech recognition company founded in 2005. It develops speech recognition, natural language understanding, sound recognition and search technologies. Its featured products include Houndify, a Voice AI developer p ...
References
Further reading
*
External links
*
*
*
{{Apple Inc.
Entertainment companies established in 1999
British companies established in 1999
Products introduced in 2002
Acoustic fingerprinting
Android (operating system) software
Apple Inc. acquisitions
Apple Inc. software
BlackBerry software
IOS software
Symbian software
Music search engines
Windows Phone software
Universal Windows Platform apps
Wear OS software
WatchOS software
2018 mergers and acquisitions
Apple Inc. services
Mobile music apps