20 years of Shazam: From finding songs to making calls to becoming the best music discovery tool for smartphones
Alvin M. Keeling
3 min read
- The music recognition application celebrates its 20th anniversary with more than 70 billion songs recognized.
- Currently,
Shazam has over 225 million monthly active users. - Most Shazamed song to the first artist to hit 1 million, check out all the details below.
Shazam, the music recognition app launched on August 19, 2002, turned 20 last week. In the late 1990s, when there were no apps or smartphones to use Shazam, people would call a “2580” number, put their phones on the radio, and then receive a text message with the title of the song and artist name.
Whether it’s the song in a nightclub or on TV, Shazam could identify songs by filtering out background noise and comparing the audio to its database of 1.6 million songs in less than 5 seconds.
Shazam was founded in 1999 by four friends, including a spirit of Indian origin, Dhiraj Mukherjee, born in New Delhi. The first country to introduce Shazam was Britain, as it was then the third largest music market after the United States and Japan. At first, Shazam Entertainment’s service was limited to Britain.
Like many startups, the founders of Shazam were unsure of the business model; later they partnered with radio stations to advertise their service on air; they could identify the song. Dhiraj Mukherjee wasn’t sure about the idea, but he took a chance anyway, he said in a 2016 interview. Shazam then moved from Nokia’s Symbian operating system to new age smartphones.
Fast forward to 2018, Apple acquired Shazam for $400 million and had a music identification service in Control Center on the iPhone ever since. Since the acquisition, Apple has improved the Shazam service by removing in-app ads, adding gig discovery functionality, and enabling Shazam support in third-party apps. Currently, Shazam has over 225 million monthly active users.
Apple made Shazam an integrated iOS feature available in 2020 with iOS 14.2.
Let’s take a look at some interesting facts about Shazam searches
To mark this milestone, Apple invited users to take a trip down memory lane with a special playlist that includes the most Shazamed songs each calendar year for the past 20 years.
The first song identified on the
Apart from these, there are more interesting numbers to see. “Prayer In C (Robin Schulz Radio Edit)” by Lilly Wood & The Prick and Robin Schulz was the first track to reach 20 million Shazams. The first artist to reach 1 million and 10 million Shazams is Lil Wayne, and David Guetta is the first artist to reach 100 million Shazams.
Now the most interesting, most shazamed of all time; Drake has recorded for the most Shazamed artist – 350 million times with the track “One Dance” – 17 million. After Drake’s “Dance Monkey” by Tones And I, it’s the most Shazamed song of all time with 41 million hits. At first, Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” was the most Shazamed song that was asked about using Shazam’s calling service.
Most Shazamed Songs by Genre
Top Hip-Hop/Rap
‘Can’t Hold Us’ by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis feat. Ray Dalton
Top Dance
‘Prayer In C (Robin Schulz Radio Edit)’ by Lilly Wood & The Prick and Robin Schulz
Top R&B/Soul
“All of Me” by John Legend
high latin
‘Mi Gente’ by J Balvin and Willy William
top-pop
‘Let Her Go’ by Passenger
Best alternative
‘Dance Monkey’ by Tones And I
Best Singer/Songwriter
Take Me to Church” by Hozier
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