Shazam hits 300 million worldwide users, releases new versions for Android and iPad

Shazam, the popular content recignition app used to find out what songs, movies and shows are playing in real time today unveiled its exciting new user experience for iPad and Android tablet fans, including a completely redesigned home screen, an improved layout for Shazam tag results for both TV and music, and a new way to browse what your friends have been tagging.

The updated app gives tablet fans new streams of activity to explore what songs people are tagging and, in the US, what TV shows people are currently watching, as well as a fascinating new interactive mapping feature enabling music fans to explore what people are discovering in any city around the world. Shazam is also bringing to its free, unlimited-usage tablet experience two popular features – lightning-fast tagging that enables recognition in as little as one second and full-screen LyricPlay™ lyrics.

“It’s the most efficient way to experience more of the media around you whether you are in your home or in any other environment throughout the world.”

“The number of Shazam users and their level of engagement continue to grow rapidly. We now have over 300 million Shazamers globally with an increasing proportion of whom use our app on their iPad or Android tablet devices to interact with television. This new version of Shazam optimizes discovery, engagement, transactions and exploration in a tablet environment,” said Andrew Fisher, Shazam CEO. “It’s the most efficient way to experience more of the media around you whether you are in your home or in any other environment throughout the world.”

When Shazam fans download the new update available in the coming weeks, they can experience the following great features that encourage and enable discovery and exploration:

• An exciting new design featuring an innovative home screen that invites exploration to see what TV shows* and music people are currently tagging, as well as find out what’s most popular in the Shazam Tag Charts.
• An interactive mapping feature, enabling fans to zoom in to any city in the world to discover, buy and share the most popular music people are listening to in that location – starting at the continent level, then drilling down into the country, state/region, city and even to the town level, in some cases;
• An improved Shazam Friends feature, providing people with one of the best ways to discover new music and media from their friends as well as giving them quick access to preview and comment on their friends’ tags;
• Lightning-fast tagging, so that people can identify what they’re watching or listening to in as little as one second;
• Sharing that’s easier than ever, including a streamlined way to tell your friends about your finds via Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and email; and,
• Automatic resubmission. If people are in a poor network reception area, they no longer have to manually resubmit their tags when they get to a better reception area. Resubmission will happen automatically, and the user will be notified.

Over the past months, Shazam has been seeing triple-digit growth in the number of downloads of the iPad version of its app, particularly for use as a second-screen companion device while watching television.