Apple’s music recognition service Shazam surpassed 100 billion song recognitions since it launched in 2002. A person would need to use it on their iPhone, iPad or Mac to identify a song every second for 3,168 years to reach that number.
“This monumental milestone not only reflects how much people enjoy using Shazam, but also their appetite for new music,” said Oliver Schusser, VP of Apple Music and Beats. “Music discovery is at the core of everything we do, and we keep innovating to make sure music lovers around the world can tap the Shazam button no matter where they hear music playing!”
Shazam popularity grew as it evolved
Shazam helps out all those times you hear a song but can’t remember the name or artist. It’s an app that listens to songs that are playing and identifies them. Apple liked the feature so much that iPhone-maker purchased the software’s developer back in 2018.
Today, Shazam is built into iOS and iPadOS, and it’s completely free to use. But when the service launched in 2002, it was an SMS service in the UK. Back then, music fans would dial 2580, hold up their phones to identify music, and receive the song name and artist via text message.
It joined the iPhone App Store in 2008, and that’s when its popularity really exploded. By the summer of 2011, it had already recognized over 1 billion songs. And it’s now surpassed 100x that.
Still improving
Shazam isn’t resting on its laurels. Recent improvements allow iOS and macOS to quickly identify music around them or within apps — even while using headphones. The latest watchOS update adds Shazam as a widget to the Smart Stack, suggesting music recognition whenever music is detected nearby.
Shazam continues to support Android. And the latest Wear OS update enables song identification directly from a user’s watch.
Get Shazam today
The stand-alone Shazam application can be downloaded from the App Store. Or add it to Control Center on an iPhone or iPad.
And there’s that Android version, too.
