The media discovery service Shazam and Warner Music Group (WMG) have struck an interesting partnership that will see the former not only discover new acts by analyzing what new songs people tag most, but also sign them to a new Shazam branded label.
Yup, you read that right: the development marks the arrival of the first crowd-sourced record label. Shazam is the world’s top music-tagging and discovery engine and WMG is the largest American-owned music conglomerate worldwide, the third largest label in the global music industry and one of the big three recording companies…
Shazam explains that the newly forged partnership will also see the two parties collaborate on marketing efforts.
WMG’s existing artists will benefit from the ability to connect with Shazam’s community of 420 million users in 200 countries. WMG will tap into the Shazam app’s promotional channels and be able to launch specially tailored promotional campaigns.
Warner’s Rob Wiesenthal said:
By partnering with Shazam, a brand which is synonymous with music discovery for fans all around the world, we have forged a potent proposition: the first crowd-sourced, big data record label.
WMG labels will receive enhanced deep data on fan behavior for WMG acts.
In turn, WMG will provide Shazam with exclusive content and other benefits to augment the user experience, “providing even more reasons for fans to make the app their destination for news about their favorite acts”.
Shazam says fans are tagging over 10,000 songs each day, “giving us incredible insight into what songs are trending and allowing us to discover future hits”. Usually, when a song debuts strongly on the Shazam chart, it’s an early indication that it has hit potential.
Shazam’s iPhone app received an overhaul last week, with a larger refresh of the app expected to roll out over the month ahead.
Ad-supported Shazam is free in the App Store.
If you want to get rid of advertising and access advanced features, you’ll need to download the $6.99 Shazam Encore from the App Store.