Shazam Reaches 250 Million Users, Expands T.V. Tagging in U.S.

[Anthony Bouchard]

By now, just about everyone that owns an iPhone – even people who own other smartphones – knows what Shazam is. If you hear music that you love, you can just pull this useful tool out and instantly tag the song you are hearing. The application will tell you exactly what the name of the song is, the artist, and link you to places where you can download it, such as iTunes. It also offers the ability to share what you tag on social networks with your friends.

Shazam’s CEO, Andrew Fisher, explains that no other music tagging service in the world has the amount of users that Shazam has. Today, Shazam reveals that the media-tagging service has recently passed the major milestone of a quarter of a billion users – that’s a lot!

With more than a quarter of a billion people who have used Shazam worldwide, no other app has our scale when it comes to offering the opportunity to engage with the media that interests them the most, whether it’s music or television. And now, that experience is even better than before, enabling people in the US to engage with any show at any time.

Shazam has definitely earned its reputation as a great music tagging application and a must-have application for any iPhone user. Since its debut in 2008, the application has been improved to tag music even faster and to be even more reliable in noisy situations.

What’s more is Shazam is expanding its T.V. tagging service in the United States. With T.V. tagging, the viewer of the T.V. program can just pull out Shazam and the application will give you information about the show that is playing including the name of the show, the cast members, the music that is played in the show, and other sources that explain the show in detail. The expansion means that users can tag a show on any T.V. channel at any time of the day. The T.V. tagging feature is currently in beta, as shown by the blue "beta" tag in the screenshot below:



If you’re interested in joining the 250 million people that already use the application and like the idea of tagging T.V. shows as well as any music that you hear, you can grab their application from the App Store. Shazam offers a free version of their application as well as a paid version for $6.99:

• Shazam Encore (paid version)
• Shazam (free version)

Sources: Shazam via TUAW

[iLoveWindows&iPhone]

T.V tagging could be pretty cool. Sound very similar to the Smart Glass demo Microsoft showed at E3 of Game of Thrones....minus the interactivity.

[feidhlim1986]

How many of that 250million are iOS users? Shazaam is on almost every smartish/smart phone going, iOS Android, Symbian, Blackberry, Windows Phone, and Java for even older phones. It's also on Mac OS and Windows.

TV tagging? I could just press the information button on my remote to tell me the show name, a synopsis, cast members and more.

[Mrteacup]

This is perfect for those times where i recognize an actor but cant place the face! yay!

[izeta]

TV tagging is nothing new. IntoNow has been out for a while and it works great.

[bigray]

If you’re interested in joining the 250 million people that already use the application and like the idea of tagging T.V. shows as well as any music that you hear, you can grab their application from the App Store. Shazam offers a free version of their application as well as a paid version for $6.99:

250million users. What noob is going to be on these forums and not be 1 of the 250million?

[JazJon]

Is Shazam Encore worth the $6.99 price compared to the FREE version of regular Shazam?

[iLoveWindows&iPhone]

250million users. What noob is going to be on these forums and not be 1 of the 250million?

What "noob" is going to be on these forums and not have read enough articles to realize the authors of this site are "noob" friendly...and will give tips, tricks, and recommendations that might seem "noobish" to some longtime users...such as yourself. With a entire 20 POSTS under you belt, your definitely not a "noob", and certainly have earned the right to smugly question the auhors article!