Shazam launches biggest update ever with faster search

Shazam is set to release a new update. In my brief testing, the new Shazam app recognized songs from television and radio in a few seconds – at times it even found a result in under a second. You may have activated Shazam way too late and it couldn’t recognize the song which will remain stuck in your head for the rest of the day. “We’re always trying to improve the Shazam experience, both on the front-end and the back-end, but this update represents the biggest-to-date changes to our core algorithm.” said Rich Riley, the CEO of Shazam Entertainment.

The service allows users to discover the music around them by pressing a single button. The goal, naturally, is to convince you to stay within Shazam rather than hopping over to the web for music research. An update to the app now brings faster song recognition, as well as getting more information about the song or artist. With more robust search results, users are likely to stick around inside the app for longer periods of time (thus potentially exposing themselves to additional advertising, earning Shazam more money) versus backing out to look for more information via Google. It also comes with an enhanced text search that makes it easier for users to find artists and their songs. Shazam reports that it has more than 120 million active users. Just in case you’re never used the app and have no idea what it’s about, Shazam basically listens to music playing nearby, compares the sample to its database, and provides the user with the title, artist, and album info.

The new Shazam update refines the search feature, making it faster than it ever was before.

Shazam also debuted its new Verified Artists feature, which includes more than 600 artists, including Coldplay, David Guetta and Maroon 5, who have more than two million followers collectively on the platform.