Shazam, the ‘media engagement’ company best known for its mobile music tagging technology, has published details of the most-tagged songs of 2012 and revealed its predictions of music artists it expects to hit the big time in 2013.
By comparing information about ‘breaking’ artists with trends indicated by Shazam’s data, the company expects French Montana, Bei Maejor, Aluna George, Joey Bada$$, Becky G, Angel Haze, Rhye, Tito Lopez, Baauer and Haim to become increasingly popular in 2013.
Its predictions for 2012 had included Lana Del Ray, A$AP Rocky, Frank Ocean and Michael Kiwanuka.
This year’s most-tagged songs - those heard by Shazam users who wanted to know more about the music - were Gotye’s “Somebody I Used to Know”, “We Are Young” by Fun and “Titanium” by David Guetta. The most-tagged artist was Rihanna, who has been tagged more than 15 million times during the past 12 months.
Will Mills, Shazam’s Director of Music and Content, said “Information - particularly data about the music that people are tagging because they like it find it interesting - is now more important than ever before. The tagging data that Shazam provides labels helps them to understand their target audience so that they can more effectively decide where to put their marketing efforts. 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.”
[Shazamers blog]