Shazam - The Sound of Music to Marketers Ears

Here’s another one for all you music lovers out there. My colleague Sayed proudly whipped out his Apple i-phone to introduce me to a music identification service known as Shazam. Shazam provides downloadable widgets to cell phones that allow you to search music album information on the go. Imagine yourself listening to a song while at a music store and liking it but not knowing the artist is. Now with Shazam all you need to do is record a clip and viola album information at your fingertips. Available for Apple i-phones, i-touch iPods, BlackBerry it is now even available for Ovi by Nokia.

The service is pretty impressive. All it takes is for the phone’s built in mike to record a part of the clip. The widget then connects to the internet and searches an online database for a match. This service is no new kid on the block having been launched back in 2002. Already Shazam has a social networking model built into it being connected to Facebook, allowing you to share songs with friends and an e-commerce angle that allows you to purchase songs online.

What could be interesting if advertisers could tie up certain advertising jingles with downloadable offers / advertisements? Imagine you are listening to the radio and an advertiser plays a jingle which he records to his phone. Or you are walking through a mall and the in store jingle has discount offers embedded in them for first five downloaders that hour. And that's just the tip of the Iceberg, envision musical treasure hunts across retail chains for starters, the possibilities are limitless.

Using a service like Shazam the phone sends the person’s phone number to a database as an interested user and provides the users with some downloadable content – jpeg image, discount coupon or whatever. For now Shazam is yet another exemplary example of bridging the gap between mobiles and internet.