Shazam is a much-acclaimed application that provides audio fingerprinting technology to help users identify nearly any piece of recorded music simply by holding their smartphone within earshot of a speaker.
Since its rollout, Shazam has been used by more than 140 million users, and its growth isn’t showing any signs of waning – the company says that it has seen weekly installs double over the course of the last year, and it expects to top 250 million in the next two years, as worldwide smartphone growth leads to further adoption of the music look-up service.
And guess what? Music is only the beginning for Shazam. What it’s really interested in is television.
The company believes it can provide additional value to advertisers who are looking for ways to interact with a growing number of viewers watching TV with their smartphone in hand.
Through a program appropiately titled “Shazam for TV”, the company is working with partners like MTV, NBCUniversal and other advertisers to integrate the service with their content. TV shows and ads are prompting users to ‘Shazam’ a certain segment by activating the app and holding the smartphone up toward screen (see the video below for some demos).
Similarly to the music app, once the Shazam’s audio recognition features recognize what the viewer is watching, it can present them with any number of things: information about the scene they’re watching, special deals and offers, and other exclusive content related to certain shows or products from specific brands.
The company announced that it had raised $32 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Institutional Venture Partners and DN Capital to continue expanding its TV efforts.
