Shazam, the makers of the popular smartphone app of the same name that allows users to identify a song from a short sample, today announced that it now has 250 million users worldwide.
Shazam also announced an expansion of its “Shazam for TV” feature, which allows users to identify TV shows the same way the app allows music identification. The expanded feature now supports any U.S. TV channel, 24 hours a day. Identifying a show will allow users to see cast details, photos, music from the show, trivia, tweets, and additional links. Users can also, of course, share the show to Facebook or Twitter.
“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,” said Andrew Fisher, Shazam CEO. “And now, that experience is even better than before, enabling people in the US to engage with any show at any time,”
Different TV shows may have different results from Shazam. For example, a sporting event will include stats, scores and schedules.
“Over the last year, Shazam has been testing and learning what works by building dozens of custom interactive second-screen experiences for select television shows and events like the Olympics on NBC, American Idol, the Grammys, and the Super Bowl, as well as other live and scripted programming across sports, reality, dramas, comedy and awards shows,” said Doug Garland, chief revenue officer at Shazam. “We’ve applied what we’ve learned to our newly expanded service, and will continue to work closely with our network partners and show producers to build special, unique second-screen experiences for their tent-pole television events and many of the most popular shows on TV.”
Greater social media integration is now a part of Shazam as well. Users who use the “Shazam Friends” feature will be able to see their Facebook friends’ tags and tag their own content to their own Facebook Timeline. Sharing via Twitter and Google+ is also available.