Shazam hits 100m user mark, targets the living room for growth

Music recognition and discovery service Shazam has reached somewhat of a milestone today: growing its user base to 100 million, of which 25 million users were added in the past six months. At first glance that sounds pretty impressive, though not entirely surprising.

Back in May we reported that the ten-year old London-based ‘startup’ had grown its user base from 50 million to 75 million members in the previous six months, and that its service had identified more than one billion songs to date. Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher predicted at the time that the company would hit the 100 million member mark by the end of this year and today he was sort-of proved right. However, these aren’t necessarily active users just those that have tried the app. So take that as you may.

The core Shazam offering is its mobile app, which runs on Android, BlackBerry, BREW, iPhone, iPad, J2ME, Symbian and Windows Phone and enables users to identify what song is playing, preview 30 second clips, buy the track, find local and international tour dates for the tagged artist and purchase tickets to the gigs.

Shazam’s next line of attack, however, is to get users interacting with television programmes and advertising using the same recognition technology that originally targeted just music. When viewers see the Shazam logo on screen, they are invited to ‘Shazam’ the television programme or commercial where they can interact with “special programming content, buy products, and enter promotions.” Launched in February, partners so far include: NBC Universal and HBO, as well as major brands, such as Levi’s Dockers and Lynx.

Of note, Shazam announced back in October 2009 that it was profitable, while raising a new round of funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (out of their iFund). The company also lists DN Capital and Acacia Capital Partners as investors.