How many apps do you have on your phone? The average user has dozens, from ones they use regularly for social networking or media browsing to others purchased and downloaded on a whim and rarely used again.
The music industry’s love-in with the tech sector has resulted in a rash of apps that are the equivalent of one-hit wonders: a novelty for maybe a week and then forgotten.
There’s one music app on my phone, however, which gets used nearly every single day. I’m one of those 100 million active Shazam users who fires up the app to find out what that song was playing on BBC Radio One or to identify a track in a DJ mix. Unlike the opinion polls before the British general election, the data produced by users identifying up to 20 million songs a day is quite dependable and you can tell a lot from this stream of information.
Cait O’Riordan is Shazam’s vice president of product and she spoke about extrapolating facts from the details at the Strata + Hadoop World data conference in London last week. Her presentation is online and is well worth checking out if you’re a music business data geek.
For instance, she predicted chart dominance for Jamaican singer Omi's Cheerleader in the months ahead.
This was based on much the same rationale as how Shazam saw in advance that Clean Bandit's Rather Be was going to be a big ol' hit last year. It can see that people are whipping out their phones to ID the tune and that the numbers are growing with every passing week.
What’s fascinating about Shazam is that it now has the data to back up the hunch and gut instincts that used to rule the hit-prediction business in label A&R and marketing departments.
It’s why record companies keep a close eye on Shazam. Speaking at the First Music Contact/Guinness Amplify masterclasses last autumn, Universal Music Ireland boss Mark Crossingham talked about his Shazam uses.
He checks it out after media appearances by the label’s acts to see what effect a TV or radio push has had on their profile and to gauge the success of that promo. He also checks out Shazam stats for acts they’re interested in working with to see what kind of data they’re generating.
Crossingham is not alone in leaning on Shazam to get an instant read on how tracks are performing. The app won’t replace a label’s A&R functions – you still need someone to decide to release the track before it can be Shazamed – but it will certainly show which releases should be prioritised because they’re the ones getting traction.
Who knew that the ultimate focus group when it comes to music would turn out to be the phone in your pocket?
YOU’VE GOT TO HEAR THIS
Fierce Mild - Yes n Yes n Yes EP
The finest new act in the big smoke come roaring out of the traps with their debut EP. It's for fans of uptown post-punk rackets, downtown funk grooving, righteous rebel yells about feminism and other isms and big smiley riot grrrl pop. Released on Little Gem, the label from the shop of the same name at the top of Dublin's O'Connell Street.
ETC
Daft Punk may have blotted their copybook with their embrace of Tidal, but there’s some decent work in the back-catalogue despite their newly minted membership of the one per cent elite.
Interstella 5555 is one such piece, a stunning sci-fi anime movie produced by the band, mangaka Leiji Matsumoto and director Kazuhisa Takenouchi. The film is screened at Dublin's Sugar Club on May 22 with DJs Johnny Moy, Ruth Kavanagh, Chris Holten, Future Bones and others on a French music trip before and after the film.
