Shazam claims direct role in 1m sales of Gotye's hit single

Gotye's worldwide hit single "Somebody That I Used to Know" may have sold one million copies as a direct result of searches on track-identification service Shazam, according to the company's statistics.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the song has become the most-tagged track ever on Shazam, with over 11 million tags to date. It recently became the first track to be tagged 1 million times in a single week.

Shazam could not offer an exact number of sales that resulted from the track identifications. It did, however, report that an average of 8 to 10 per cent of IDs do convert to sales, which would put Gotye's song right around the 1m sales mark via the Shazam application alone.

This is certain to be only a small percentage of total sales for a track that has achieved such worldwide success. But it's a result that shows how a timely and simple path from discovery to purchase can get people spending money instead of heading down the path to piracy.