Shazam Finds More Ways To Increase Music Sales With Top Charts In Amazon’s MP3 Store
Earlier this year Shazam shared the eye opening news that Shazam users are heading over to digital stores and buying up to $300 million worth of music a year. Now they're providing charts to Amazon that may well increase sales if it causes shoppers to do some extra browsing and discover new tracks. Obviously that's what Amazon is hoping as well since they still lag way behind iTunes in digital music sales.
Shazam Top Charts are now available in Amazon's MP3 store for web or mobile sales.
According to the announcement:
"Shazam’s database has more than 45 million tracks and receives more than 15 million tags per day, driving the sale of more than 500,000 items on a daily basis. In fact, the high tag volume provides reliable data that lets the industry see which acts and tracks are popular with consumers."
"The average time between a track reaching No. 1 on Shazam New Release Chart and Top 10 Billboard is 43 days, making it the leading predictor of hits in the music industry."
Back in January Shazam announced $300 Million in annual iTunes and Amazon MP3 sales which I assume was for 2012. In any case, an undisclosed percentage would have been Amazon sales. It will be interesting to see if the introduction of Shazam Charts will boost those figures, assuming they're revealed.
It works like this:
"When shoppers click on a song from Shazam Charts within the Amazon MP3 Store, they are given the option to purchase the individual track or the entire album—making it easy for customers to seamlessly find and purchase popular tracks and albums from Amazon MP3 while still remaining engaged with Shazam."
Easier is better. Removing friction increases sales. So we'll see.
I'm not at all skeptical about Shazam's ability to drives sales. That $300 million announcement really turned heads at the time.
But if the charts end up being simply an alternate route to discovery of tracks already selling on Amazon via Shazam, then it may just lead to substitute buys. Then again, as part of the Shazam system, it could draw folks in even deeper.
Either way, it's great to see growing partnerships between companies who help artists earn income.
More:
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (Twitter/Facebook) is building a writing hub at Flux Research. To suggest topics about music tech, DIY music biz or music marketing for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
