An overlooked announcement during last week’s extremely active Mobile World Congress was an update to Shazam’s iOS and Android apps. The company is refocusing its discovery engine on content besides music, making it easier to find information on select TV shows and live TV events.
At the same time, the new app showcases friends’ music tags in a beautiful new interface that, now available for both iOS and Android, connects with Facebook, Google+ for social interaction and sharing, YouTube for music videos, and LyricFind for words.
Like Songza, Shazam realized that there was great opportunity to work with brands, production studios and music labels to promote content in ways that skew closer to the “native advertising” category, and the company has partnered with events like the Superbowl and Grammys to work as the aural equivalent of QR codes in many cases. The redesigned app, in addition to allowing Rdio subscribers the option to listen to full tracks, shows song lyrics and critical artist information in an image-heavy feed. In the US, customers can find out information on nearly every show on television by clipping a few seconds of audio.
There’s now a news feed that lists what Facebook friends are listening to in chronological order, and the Android version, rolling out over the next few days, promises the same functionality as its iOS counterpart. A small number of users in Shazam’s Android “test group” will see the update beginning today.
[source]App Store, Google Play[/source]
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