[UK] Shazam’s funding today from Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers could put it onto a path to IPO. The very cool way to find out the name of that track you like in a noisy bar, has reached 50m users. It’s aiming for 100 million by the end of next year.
The amount of funding has been undisclosed, so what size of that IPO would be is anyone’s guest. The cash for Shazam’s fourth fundraising is coming out of KPCB’s $100m iFund, which was launched in March last year aiming at mobile companies. Shazam also has investors DN Capital and Acacia Capital Partners. Shazam has raised about $20m to date.
Rival service Midomi is a competitor but there seems plenty of room for both services.
Shazam started ten years ago with a mobile call to 2580 in the UK, but has scaled fast after the release of its iPhone App in the summer of 2008 – which has now been downloaded by 10m users. It’s been adding 500,000 users a week since February, according to CEO Andrew Fisher.
Shazam’s “freemium” model means 70 per cent of Shazam customers take premium subscriptions of $5 or you can ID 5 songs a month, supported by ads.