Since its inception in 1999, Shazam has become one of the most widely used music technologies in the world. With over 100 million active users each month, the Bay Area-based company has identified over 15 billion songs to date and that number is only growing rapidly each day. Now it is rolling out a brand new feature that takes the ability of Shazam one step further with a new visual recognition feature.
The new feature allows users to utilize the Shazam app to identify objects in the real world using the camera on your phone. Up until now, the app has only allowed users to identify pieces of sound using the speakers on your phone, but this is a radical shift towards more ambitious projects.
"Visual recognition is what's next for us, [including] the ability for users to engage with printed packaging, print ads, books, CDs, [and] a whole world of things," Shazam CEO Rich Riley told Fortune Magazine.
A user can open their phone and scan the Shazam icon that appears on the object and this opens sometimes-exclusive content related to the visual. One can also scan QR codes, which makes this not as ground-breaking as it could be. It won't work on most objects since they need to have the Shazam logo embedded on them and before this update, real life objects have not featured them.
To make sure people have something to Shazam with their camera, the app has partnered with a whole new group of companies that provide visual content and otherwise including The Walt Disney Company, Esquire, Time, The Wall Street Journal, Target, Warner Bros and more.
Part of the issue will be to educate users that they can use Shazam items. It is currently developed a "call to action" to alert users that items are Shazamable.
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