Shazam's annual active user number worldwide 2017-2018

Throughout the 2018 calendar year, Shazam reportedly had 478 million annual active users, an impressive increase from the 400 million recorded in 2017. Some sources have attributed this rapid growth to the recent acquisition of Shazam by tech giant Apple, a deal which cost Apple 400 million U.S. dollars. Apple acquired Shazam in late 2018, a move considered controversial by some because of the effect the acquisition could have on competitors. Discussions about the acquisition began in 2017, and it was noted that Shazam would no longer refer users to Spotify or Google Play Music and instead serve to appease Apple Music users. The acquisition was investigated by the European Commission in early 2018 but approved in September of that year.

What is Shazam?

Shazam is a song finder app which can be used to identify music, TV shows, movies, and even advertising. The app's built-in microphone accesses and gathers data on audio samples, analyzes them and then searches for a match in its vast database of content. The service is appealing to consumers in that it offers a simple solution to a common problem. When users are curious about the name of a song, be it in a bar, restaurant, store, or anywhere else playing a song the user wants to know the name of, Shazam can be used to identify the track that is currently playing, providing the volume is high enough and the ambient sound is not too intrusive. Some songs have been identified by Shazam tens of millions of times, including tracks from late Swedish DJ Avicii and British singer songwriter Ed Sheeran.

Whilst background noise or ambient sound can detrimentally affect Shazam's ability to identify the music, the service is far more sophisticated than when it started out in 2002. Initially, users could simply dial the number '2580' on their phone, hold the device close to the music source and wait to receive an SMS message with the song title and artist name. The app was among the first to be included in the Apple App Store, and by 2011 could also be used to detect ads and TV shows. Shazam is now one of the leading music apps in the Apple App Store worldwide.

Shazam is not the only music recognition app on the market, but is certainly one of the most well-known. Other applications which can be used for song identification include SoundHound (Shazam's biggest competitor), Musixmatch, BeatFind, Google Music Recognition, and Soly, to name but a few.