Last month Shazam was discovered to be raising a new round of funding from the iFund. And since then Shazam announced a new paid application that is available for download.
The concept behind Shazam is covered by a patent owned by Digimarc according to Bruce Davis, Chairman and CEO of Digimarc.
Digimarc has had patents since 1995 that relate to technology where a device can identify audio and visual content and immediately link it to an associated Internet service. Davis said that they tried to settle with Shazam out of court, but little progress has been made. So a complaint has been filed.
Shazam started in 2002 as a mobile music discovery company. The company first gained an immense amount of popularity when launching an iPhone application. The Shazam application has been downloaded about 50 million times on the iPhone, Google Android, Symbian, BlackBerry, etc. Shazam has a database of over 8 million songs on their database which goes back to the 1950’s. Shazam is a private company that is based in London, England.
When you hear a song on the radio or on your laptop, you can Tag it using the Shazam application. Shazam will tell you the name of the song, give you a link to buy the music on Amazon or iTunes, and allow you to tweet what you are listening to.
The latest news with the company is that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has invested in them. Kleiner Perkins made the investment through their iFund financial arm which is intended for iPhone application developers. Shazam previously raised $12.3 million in funding from DN Capital and Acacia Capital.
Shazam is planning to launch a service that will connect with concert tickets for artists that have been tagged by the app. So far Shazam has been cash-flow positive.
Anyone that owns an iPhone should have downloaded Shazam by now. Shazam is a free iPhone and T-Mobile G1 application that allows you to find out the name of the song that is playing near you. Ever since this past September, the company added 20 million users. Now they have 35 million users across the globe.
Shazam said that because of their accessibility across the globe, their user base grew substantially. Shazam is offered by 75 carriers over 70 countries. About 1 million tracks are being tagged per month. Andrew Fisher, CEO of Shazam stated that they expect them to have about 50 million users across the globe.
Although Facebook is not on board with the Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android operating system quite yet, News Corporation (NYSE:NWS) subsidiary MySpace has joined the plight in the form of an application. The application will be available in the Android Market.
“MySpace users will love the new Android integration with cool features like instant photo uploading and access to the latest shows from their favorite bands,” stated John Faith, VP and GM of Mobile for MySpace. “We want to ensure that all users have access to their global MySpace network while they’re on-the-go, and we believe Android is a natural fit for an optimized MySpace Mobile experience.”
Through the MySpace Android application, users will be able to upload photos, view concert dates and tours of artists, comment on profiles, search/add friends, send/read messages, and update moods. Currently MySpace receives over 2 million unique visitors per day.
The MySpace application will be integrated with Shazam, a music download service and search engine. Anyone using Google Android will be able to put their phone near a song playing and MySpace will identify the artist and song through it’s partnership with Shazam. MySpace is also currently working on building a similar application for the Blackberry.
