The existing partnership between Rdio and Shazam took a big leap forward today. Going forward, the music-identification tool will allow Rdio members to stream whole songs from within the Shazam app. The updated Shazam app hit iOS on Monday, with a rollout expected for Android in the next few days. Continue Reading
Amazon released its much-awaited Fire phone this week, stepping into competitive waters with Apple and Google on the hardware side. At the same time, Amazon is stabbing into the music-identification space dominated by Shazam and SoundHound, each of which gives users quick song recognition and the ability to store “finds” in partner music services like Rdio and Spotify. Amazon’s most remarkable Fire phone feature is Firefly, which identifies music and much more. Continue Reading
Apple kicked of its annual Worldwide Developer Conference today with the main event for non-professional Apple-watchers: the keynote. Anchored by CEO Tim Cook, supported by departmental leaders, the keynote traditionally previews Apple’s future products related to its operating systems. Continue Reading
Facebook has announced a new feature in upcoming app releases that works by identifying music playing in the user’s location, and including a 30-second clip in Facebook posts. Shazam and SoundHound, market leaders for song recognition, are probably not over the moon about this incursion. Continue Reading
The world’s three biggest music labels — Warner Music Group (WMG), Universal Music Group (UMG), and Sony Music Entertainment — each invested $3-million in Shazam, a leading song-recognition app. The company has raised at least $92-million in the last three years. Continue Reading
Listening to music and acquiring music are entwined. In 2014, collecting music has a new meaning, and increasingly occurs without the need of a traditional music product — physical or virtual. What collecting music means today. Continue Reading
Rdio announced a new feature in its partnership with music-identification app Shazam, raising the game in an escalating rivalry with competing service SoundHound. The new feature enables users to take any song from Shazam’s Pulse service, which is a trending chart of popular song IDs, and throw it into an Rdio playlist. Continue Reading
The five most-read articles of last week. Is the streaming-music business model fundamentally broken? (This was also our most-linked article.) iTunes Radio and Pandora: who is slaying whom? Lew Dickey (CEO, Cumulus) speaks out about streaming. Shazam starts a record label. More. Continue Reading
In what appears to be a targeted competitive thrust, song-identification platform SoundHound announced an app update that connects more substantially to music subscription service Spotify. Competitive strategy against Shazam and its recently completed deal with Rdio? Continue Reading
In a first-of-its-kind deal, song-recognition company Shazam has partnered with Warner Music Group (WMG) to create a new Shazam-branded music label, and to augment WMG marketing of existing artists with Shazam’s consumer-use data. Continue Reading
Expanding a deal struck earlier this month, Rdio and Shazam now announce that their collaboration is extended to 29 non-U.S. countries. The still-new feature lets Rdio subscribers create an auto-playlist that holds all of their Shazam-ID’d music. Continue Reading
Shazam and SoundHound identify songs on the radio for hundreds of millions of users. Both apps make it easy to turn the song into a starting point in Rdio, Spotify, and other online services. Shouldn’t there be a way radio can participate in the song-identification gateway? We have an idea. Continue Reading