Shazam, which enables users to identify or ‘tag’ music tracks and learn more about TV shows via a smartphone app, has predicted the music artists that it expects will ‘break’ during 2014.
Overall, more than 400 million people use Shazam worldwide, with more than 15 million Shazam searches taking place every day.
Predictions for 2014 combine subjective opinions from people working in the music industry with quantitative data from Shazam tags. Performers expected to hit the mainstream headlines in 2014 include Action Bronson, August Alsina, Banks, Jhené Aiko, Kid Ink, Lucy Hale, Martin Garrix, Rich Homie Quan, Sam Smith and Vance Joy.
Predictions from last year included Haim and French Montana.
Will Mills, VP for Music & Content at Shazam, said “Data - in particular the unique and pure signal of using Shazam with music is a key part of breaking new artists and songs for the music industry. The Shazam data in our charts helps labels and the media more than ever see where their artists and songs are resonating in a market. And with the maps feature in our apps this even shows this down to the zip code level, so you can see highly specific regional trends. Up to 85% of the songs that get to number one Shazam’s Tag Charts go on to break nationally, making it one of the most accurate predictive measures for success and a key driver for Shazam of more than $300 million in digital music sales through our partners.”
The company named Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines and Wake Me Up by Avicii as the ‘most Shazamed’ tracks during 2013. The most-tagged artist of the year was rapper/producer duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.
[Shazamers.com blog]