Shazam

Shazam’s iPhone app gets an overhaul

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 9, 2016

With increased competition in the media-fingerprinting and recommendations space and an ever-growing number of new music services vying for our attention, incumbents like Shazam are finding it harder to stay relevant.

Shazam is of course wildly popular so it's not really going anywhere. On the other hand, with growth slowing - they have 150 million users - the company has now decided to redesign the iPhone app in order to increase engagement.

The app redesign signals bigger changes coming to the service later this month. Both Shazam and Shazam Encore have received this visual makeover, now live in the App Store...

Shazam gains auto-listening feature, WhatsApp and Pinterest integration and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 19, 2013

The increasingly popular music discovery and fingerprinting service Shazam has just refreshed its free iPhone and iPad application with a new Auto Shazam feature that basically listens for songs and television shows in the background and tags them automatically, even if the device is locked, courtesy of new iOS 7 technologies. You can now share your Shazam Tags with people on WhatsApp, pin them to your Pinterest boards and send them to others via the iOS Messages platform.

Jump past the fold for more on Auto Shazam...

Shazam now connects with Rdio

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 2, 2013

Shazam's music fingerprinting app for the iPhone and iPad is continuously getting better and more useful after each new update. Right following the September 18 release of iOS 7, Shazam mobile apps were immediately updated with iOS 7-friendly design and technologies.

And just a month ago, the app was refreshed with the handy artist updates, the ability to see what your friends have tagged and a new newsfeed-like interface for real-time updates and interactions with the Shazam community.

On Monday, Shazam got bumped to version 7.2 which brings a very interesting feature: if you're a Rdio user, you can now listen to your Shazam tracks as an Rdio playlist. A few other goodies are included in this Shazam update, listed after the break...

Shazam launches artist updates, friends’ tags and newsfeed-style interface

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 23, 2018

The music discovery and fingerprinting engine Shazam is among a bunch of apps that were updated with iOS 7-inspired interface shortly after Apple released the new iPhone, iPad and iPod software for public consumption on September 18.

It's been quite a wait since Shazam's last feature-packed update and today's release has seen to that.

Not only does Shazam now let you see what your friends are tagging in real-time and check out updates from the artists you follow, it also sports a brand new interface to interact with the Shazam community. More on that in just a second...

Shazam previews now play right in Twitter

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 29, 2016

Apart from bringing out the ability to purchase multiple songs at once through iTunes back in June, the music discovery service Shazam has been pretty quiet in terms of its iPhone and iPad app, releasing only a few maintenance updates. Today's version 6.2.1 update changes that.

The just-refreshed application now features way faster song recognition on older devices and brings integration with Twitter, allowing everyone to play tweeted out Shazam song previews right in Twitter, thanks to Shazam's new Twitter Card.

The micro-blogging service recently released an iOS music discovery app called #music so this Shazam update ups the ante in terms of social music discovery. More tidbits right after the break...

Shazam now lets you buy multiple songs at once through iTunes

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 12, 2018

The music discovery engine Shazam has been on a roll lately. May brought an exclusive background television-tagging features to Shazam for iPad and last month the company added a new Pulse feature to ease music discovery by analyzing the trending real-time charts. In today's update, your Shazam apps have received another useful feature: multi-track purchase...

Shazam updated with new ‘Pulse’ feature for discovering new music

Cody Lee ∙ June 17, 2013

It seems like music discovery is all the rage these days. Twitter launched a new iPhone app back in April, and Apple launched its iTunes Music service earlier this month, both of which place a large focus on helping users discover new music.

And today, Shazam pushed further into the space. The popular song, album and artist identifier released a significant update to its iPhone and iPad apps this morning with, among other things, a new 'Pulse' feature for discovering new music...

Shazam for iPad gains exclusive background television-tagging features

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 12, 2018

The iPad edition of the media fingerprinting and discovery app Shazam has been updated today with a couple noteworthy enhancements.

First and foremost, the app can now auto-tag the music, television shows and ads playing around you (most likely on your telly), even when the app is in the background (you'll see the red bar when auto-tagging is running).

This interesting television-tagging capability lets you surf the web, check your email and chat with your friends, for example, while Shazam dutifully identifies what's playing on the radio or your telly. You can then revisit those tags later to pick the media you're interested in.

And, a redesigned homescreen makes it easier to see what your Facebook friends have been watching and listening to, explore popular tags by continents, countries, regions, cities and towns and browse the most tagged TV shows in the past few hours...

Shazam stats: One in five US iPhones run the app, 10M songs tagged per day

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 12, 2018

Speaking to the UK's The Guardian newspaper at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Shazam's marketing boss revealed that last month twenty percent of iPhones in the United States used its media discovery and recommendation software. It gets better as even more fans overseas in countries like France and UK used Shazam on their Apple handset, as much as forty percent of them.

And with iPads growing stronger and the next iPhone looming around the corner, any increase in the installed iPhone base is bound to reflect positively on Shazam's numbers. On Monday, Shazam announced it passed 300 million active users globally, 90 million in the United States alone.

The company also launched an update to its iOS client with a revamped iPad interface, a much faster tagging and more streamlined sharing features...

Passing 300M users, Shazam announces revamped iPad app

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 12, 2018

The media discovery and recommendation engine Shazam at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain on Monday said it surpassed 300 million users and announced updates to its app for iPad and Android tablets in the coming weeks. Some of the newly added capabilities include a much faster tagging with automatic resubmissions (handy during poor network reception), better Shazam Friends interactions and a new streamlined way to share your finds via Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and email.

Also on tap for iPad and Android tablets: a revamped home screen with updated layouts for tagged results from TV and music and a brand new interactive mapping feature letting you see what people aroun the world are discovering and sharing using Shazam mobile apps. What's best, Shazam is now providing the two premium features - fast (and unlimited) tagging in as little as one second and full-screen LyricPlay lyrics - as part of the free tablet experience...

Shazam redesigns its fugly apps: larger artwork, Google+ sharing, offline tagging

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 11, 2012

Shazam, a music identification service popular with smartphone owners, today issued a nice update to both its free and paid iPhone apps. For starters, Shazam version 5.5 integrates better with iOS 6 by invoking the standard system sheet when sharing tags to Facebook (really, what took so long?). More importantly, you can now record audio snippets offline for later matching, something I've been yearning for since the dawn of time.

Google+ sharing is also supported, as is searching by name, title, tag date or location. Last, but certainly not the least, the app's fugly interface has been overhauled with larger artwork for music, TV ads, or shows, a prettier listening screen and generally nicer-looking interface that's easy on the eyes and more in line with Apple's iOS Human Interface Guidelines.

These features are in addition to September's update (when Shazam raised $32 million in funding), which has brought out the interesting ability to tag any television show on any channel in the United States...

Shazam gets ability to tag any TV show on any U.S. channel

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 17, 2012

Shazam, a popular music identification service, announced today a major update and milestone to its mobile apps. Shazam now commands an astounding user base of 250 million, with more than two million users added each week. The London, England-headquartered startup was founded in 1999 by Chris Barton, Philip Inghelbrecht, Dhiraj Mukherjee and Avery Wang.

Since their inception, Shazam mobile apps for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and other platforms have remained amongst the top ten most downloaded apps of all time. Shazam updated these apps today with new features, including ability to tag any television show on any channel in the United States in order to find out what music is playing, who the actors are and more...