How Shazam’s UX Has Changed
Let’s do the time warp again!
Shazam was founded in 1999 and released as a UK-only service in 2002.
To take you back to 2002 — ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers’ was in cinemas, Nelly was topping the charts with ‘Hot in Herre’ (I recall liking it at the time, shudder), Lennox Lewis successfully defended his heavyweight title against Mike Tyson, Brazil beat Germany 2–0 to lift the World Cup and a bunch of iconic games were released.
To use Shazam back then, users would dial 2580, hold their phone near music for 30 seconds, then receive a text message displaying the name of the track and artist.
It cost £0.09 per call or £0.50 to save the information to a profile page on the site. The site was also used to promote the service and view the most popular tracks.
At the time, flagship phones looked like this:
Yup, they were smaller! Colour screens were just being introduced and the Nokia 6610 (left) was the world’s first cameraphone, it had a 0.3MP rear camera — what a time to be alive.
Building a compelling brand identity
The website gradually became more useful and displayed a list of tracks that could be discovered and rated. The service started rolling out to other countries. It’s worth noting that the logo and colouring changed in 2007 and remain almost identical today.
In terms of colour psychology they picked a light blue which signifies trust and loyalty. Other characteristics of blue are calmness and efficiency. It was found to be the world’s favourite colour in a 2015 YouGov survey.
A large amount of the most popular brands use blue for these reasons. It was a smart change by Shazam.
The main service (dialing 2580) remained the same until 2008 when the iPhone app came out.
This was a game changer. Now everything was handled in the app, you could identify songs much faster — in one tap — and tag them. All tags were saved on a list that could be viewed on your phone at any time. The service became free and was supported by ads.
Towards the end of 2008 they launched an app for Android after Google requested one. From this point, Shazam started partnering with other brands and began to expand on the service it provided.
They were the go-to service for identifying audio. Instead of being satisfied with that, they wanted to craft a deeper experience for their users by adding additional features.
Now the service includes 3rd party services to play or buy the songs directly, Shazam drives an average of 400,000 daily music purchases (great for the industry).
Artists can share songs they currently like for their fans to discover and connect with. There’s other useful features bundled in too, such as song lyrics or a link to the music video.
There’s an always-on option called Auto Shazam. When enabled, it allows discovery of music to happen continuously, even when your phone is locked. So you can discover the soundtrack to your entire day, effortlessly.
The app has been downloaded a billion times and had an average of 120 million active monthly users in 2016. Shazam says millions of new users are downloading the app each month. Those are significant usage figures.
How accurate is it?
Very. I put it through its paces with some relatively small indie bands, Japanese songs from anime shows and some dance remixes. It got it correct every time except for one, which I found very impressive — some of the mixes had been up for less than 24 hours.
There’s also a big push to get users interested in brands Shazam has partnered with like Mcdonald’s and Coca Cola. Users can use their camera to shazam posters to get discounts or the chance to win prizes. They can also shazam selected TV advertisements to access similar content.
They’ve set up an initiative they call Shazam for Brands, to allow interested companies to advertise Shazam-branded content, receive data insights and access to artists who match their brand values.
It works rather well indeed. Users are engaging with brands in fun new ways via Shazam while scoring freebies or discounts as a result. The brand benefits from awesome advertising opportunites and Shazam make revenue from it. It’s a win-win situation for all.
Recently Shazam has integrated features in Snapchat. Snapchat has an average 166 million daily users, and now they can engage with Shazam content and share songs as snaps with their friends. According to CEO Rich Riley, the aim was to “make discovering and sharing music both fun and easier than ever”.
If you don’t have a smartphone handy, don’t worry. You can download it on Mac, Apple Watch and Android Wear.
KISS my interface
One of the main highlights of the app is its incredibly simple user interface.
It’s one tap to Shazam a song, a long press for auto-shazam, a touch of the camera icon to Shazam a poster. All actions are clearly labeled, it’s a delight to use. This year, they introduced a gesture based navigation system — swipe left for ‘My Shazam’, swipe right to discover.
The only thing I’d say they’re missing is voice support. I think a vocal command to Shazam a song without having to touch the device at all, would be beneficial to some users.
Personas for typical users
You have people who use Shazam traditionally, only to identify songs they like but don’t know the name of. Then you have those who use it as more of a social experience to see what artists are sharing, to engage in brand experiences. Then there’s the middle ground between both of those.
The social aspect is geared towards a younger demographic, 7 in 10 Shazam users are under 35, with 16 to 24 year olds making up 36% of the user base.
Over 70% of Shazam users identify themselves as being constantly connected, open to trying new products and likely to recommend services to friends and family. 35% of users said they paid for music downloads in the past month.
Conclusion
There’s other applications that identify audio, such as SoundHound. However, they’ve never competed on equal terms with Shazam.
Shazam invented this type of service and they’ve built a trustworthy brand that retains users while gaining new ones.
They’ve made some really smart business decisions like getting big brands involved as partners, embracing tech innovations such as AR, and they benefit the music industy by contributing to song sales & working with featured artists.
Users get an app that nails its primary function, offers solid 3rd party software intergration and keeps adding new features that continue to impress.
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