Shazam goes vinyl
Through a partnership, the music-identification app will be able to recognize 4 million dance music download tracks and, for the first time, identify songs that are new on vinyl only.
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The app that automatically recognizes and identifies songs by listening to snippets of them has sealed a partnership with Juno, one of the biggest stores for electronic dance music. The tie-up will increase the number of dance tracks in Shazam's database by adding Juno's catalog of 4 million downloadable songs and, for the first time, making new vinyl releases available for identification.
"Vinyl music is seeing a resurgence in the industry, with sales at their highest for 15 years. Crucially some of the most important and exciting new music is released on vinyl first before later hitting digital," Shazam Vice President of Music and Content Will Mills said in a release.
For Juno, the partnership means Shazam users will have easy access to purchase tagged tracks from Juno's store.
Vinyl has been bucking the long declining trend of physical music sales. Juno said that in the last year, vinyl sales grew more than 20 percent. Last week, the Recording Industry Association of America reported that while 2013 shipments of music in physical formats were down 12 percent in value, vinyl shipments grew 33 percent to $211 million. That's still a very small portion of the overall music market, which totaled about $7 billion last year.