Yesterday Shazam, the company that lets users identify recorded music simply by holding their phones up toward a speaker, announced that it had raised a whopping $32 million. The company’s goal: to apply the powerful technology it’s developed over the last decade to television shows and commercials. So how will they do that?
I had a chance to sit down with Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher, who discussed in detail how this leap to television will work. And we also touched on quite a few other topics, including the fact that Shazam is now ten years old (it actually powered the song recognition features that were offered by mobile phone carriers before the rise of the iPhone and Android). You can watch the whole interview in the video above.
I also took the opportunity to ask if Fisher has seen any trends emerge on each mobile platform — after all, Shazam has a universal appeal (just about everyone likes music and wants to figure out what they’re listening to). Fisher shared some interesting data points, including the fact that “iTunes is the dominant platform in terms of user propensity to purchase…”. In other words, iPhone users are far more likely to purchase songs than users on Android and other platforms. That’s not a huge surprise, but it further supports the claims that iOS users are more accustomed to buying content on their phones.
For more, be sure to tune into the interview.