Apple today announced that its popular music recognition tool, Shazam, has identified more than 100 billion songs since its launch. The service, which launched in 2002 as an SMS service in the UK, and music fans would dial a number, hold up there phones to identify music, and then would receive the song name and artist name via text message. It was also one of the first apps to be available for the iPhone in the App Store in 2008.
“This monumental milestone not only reflects how much people enjoy using Shazam, but also their appetite for new music,” said Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music and Beats. “Music discovery is at the core of everything we do, and we keep innovating to make sure music lovers around the world can tap the Shazam button no matter where they hear music playing!”
Apple shared some information to help frame the 100 billion statistic:
- That’s equivalent to 12 songs identified for every person on Earth.
- A person would need to use Shazam to identify a song every second for 3,168 years to reach 100 billion.
- That’s more than 2,200x the number of identifications of Shazam’s top song ever, “Dance Monkey,” with over 45 million tags.
- Shazam Predictions 2023 alum Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” was the first track released this year to hit 10 million recognitions, and the fastest, doing so in 178 days. At that pace, it would take more than 4,800 years for it to hit 100 billion.
Apple acquired Shazam in 2018, and the Music Recognition feature is now built into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS and it is deeply integrated across Apple’s software platforms.
The playlist below lists Shazam’s top 100 most-identified songs.
