Shazam, which is a music discovery app that is used by a lot of people, is considering turning its attention in recognizing images as a way of increasing its revenues. It’s a British technology whose offices are situated in London and New York, is establishing a new piece that would allow mobile devices users use cameras to make a scan of an image containing the Shazam logo. Items such posters, packaged commodities or printed media will bear such logos.
Users will then be able to be shown on their mobile screen anything be it a movie being promoted or an online store from which they can make commodity purchases in an advertisement. This move is made so as to put Shazam against a multiple of several fledging technological groups such as the Blippar and Powa Technologies. Blippar and Powa Technologies also develops apps that can pinpoint pictures and objects in the real world environment.
These groups have a common view that the resultant impact of technology is the creation of a multibillion-dollar market. This market is believed going to allow companies target advertisement to only willing consumers at the same time making it faster for the particular customers to identify and make the purchase of commodities over the internet.
The Shazam; CEO, Mr. Riley has initially commented that they have a significant advantage amongst its rivals as over 100m people are already using Shazam on a month’s time to identify the music. It is based on the belief that their installation base among customers is huge and thus a significant differentiator. He outlined that people use at least 25 apps per month averagely, and they never show an interest in downloading an app that is unknown to them, even if they do, they rarely or just never use it again. Shazam being a top app to the people across the world, then they believe that is a natural extension of their functionality.
Shazam itself has fortified many deals with several companies such as Target, Levi’s and Disney among others. Though they have revealed what the companies has paid exactly, but it’s believed to be meaningful to them in terms of capital. It has also been indicated that Shazam is yet to make a profit and Mr. Riley agreed to be hit by rather a decrease in the music download market. The company makes revenue from a commission earned from the sale of music mostly via Apple’s iTunes online store upon a user downloading a music track by Shazam.
The CEO also said their alternative revenue inflows were also growing. This involved adverts displayed within the app, licensing agreements and deals allied to the way Shazam can recognize TV shows, onscreen ads, and even the movies. In January, $30million was raised by Shazam, with the investors who were not named gaining about 3% of the total amount, this has so far ranked the company at more than $1bn in revenue. Previously Shazam raised $95m from Carlos Slim’s America Movil and the US enterprise capital fund Kleimer Caufield & Byers.