Shazam looks for ways to get more people to share music | Technology | Los Angeles Times
If you’ve seen an iPhone commercial on TV, you’ve probably also seen Shazam. If you hold your handset in the air while music is playing, the application tries to identify the song for you.
Although it’s featured in a commercial for the Apple device, Shazam is agnostic: It works on 75 devices in 60 countries. And it’s determined not to be a one-trick iPhone pony. The British company says it’s trying to figure out ways to get people to use it even more often, helping the music industry at the same time.
When it launched two years ago, Shazam required people to send a text message to initiate a phone call so the service could identify the song. It then texted the song’s name to the requester.
Now, in the “brave new world” of app stores, it’s more accessible as an application on Apple and Android phones, Shazam Chief Executive Andrew Fisher said in an interview today. Since September 2008, the service has attracted 16 million new users, he said, and 5 million have downloaded the application on the iPhone.
via Shazam looks for ways to get more people to share music | Technology | Los Angeles Times.