Having passed one billion recognitions per month, Apple-owned Shazam proves its worth

The music identification service Shazam has passed one billion recognitions every month, a remarkable achievement for an app that debuted with little fanfare on the App Store in 2008.


STORY HIGHLIGHTS:

  • Shazam passed one billion monthly recognitions
  • Shazam debuted on the App Store back in 2018
  • Apple snapped up Shazam in December 2017
  • Shazam is available on non-Apple devices, too

Shazam proves its worth: 1B monthly recognitions

The most Shazamed track of all time is “Dance Monkey” by Tones and I, garnering 38.9 million Shazam’s as of June 17, 2021. The first-ever Shazam result? “Jeepster” by T.Rex.

Oliver Schusser, Apple’s Vice President of Apple Music and Beats, commented:

Shazam is synonymous with magic, both for the fans getting a song recognition almost instantly, and for the artists being discovered. With one billion recognitions a month, Shazam is one of the most popular music apps in the world. Today’s milestones show not only people’s love for Shazam, but also the ever-growing appetite for music discovery around the world.

The app performs its magic by “fingerprinting” a song and matching it against Shazam’s music catalog. To protect your privacy, this audio fingerprint is generated directly on the user’s device, with no audio uploaded to servers at any point.

Using Shazam on Apple’s platforms

With iOS 15’s new ShazamKit framework, developers will be able to write apps for Apple’s platforms to customize Shazam’s media identification service with their own catalog of custom sounds to make prerecorded audio recognizable.

On Apple’s platforms, customers can access Shazam functionality through the Control Center and Siri. When accessed through the Control Center, Shazam can identify music playing in any app on your iPhone, even when wearing headphones.

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On top of that, people can also use Shazam’s native apps for iOS, iPadOS and macOS from the App Store. You don’t even need to have the app installed—with the Shazam app clip, you can identify a song and access various information about it in a way that feels like a native app.

The Shazam app on the App Store comes with a handy home screen widget.

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Fans of iOS automation can even take advantage of Apple’s “Shazam It” action in the Shortcuts app to access Shazam functionality programmatically in their own automation workflows. And last but not least, Shazam can also be used on the web.

Shazam launched in 2018 as one of the first apps on the App Store. Apple’s integrated Shazam into its platforms since acquiring the company in December 2017 for a reported $400 million.

Two years after the deal was finalized, Shazam passed the 200 millionth monthly active user.