Shazam adds 2 million tracks to music library
Mobile-music discovery provider Shazam announced on Thursday that it has increased its music database from 6 million tracks to 8 million tracks, thanks to new partnerships with record labels.
Shazam, which provides the fourth most popular Apple App Store download of 2008, behind competitor Pandora, at No. 1, analyzes songs playing through a stereo or radio, and displays the song's title, artist, biographical information, and a link to purchase the track.
According to the company, the new tracks added to the library include additional North American, Asian, and European content, and will be linked to Shazam's existing products, which, in addition to an iPhone application includes one built for Google's Android mobile operating system.
"With our music alliances, we gain access to the most relevant music well before many other services, which ensures that users can discover popular and niche music all over the globe," Will Mills, Shazam's head of music, said in a statement.
With the addition of 2 million tracks to its discovery engine, Shazam has become even more compelling. Although it works extremely well, my single gripe with the application is that its library is too small, and at times, it isn't able to recognize songs. But now that Shazam has added tracks to its database, the company contends that those issues won't arise as often now.
The 2 million new tracks have been added to Shazam's database, and no additional app installation is required to access them.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Don, what was the "deal" that caused the addition of the tracks? Was it - we now have 6 mil? we are popular on iTunes app store?
Curiosity & this cat