Spotify, Shazam tie up on finding and buying music
(Reuters) - Music services Spotify and Shazam are teaming up so that users of iPhones and Android phones can immediately buy music from Spotify that they have discovered using Shazam, the two companies said on Thursday.
Under the deal that links two of Europe's top technology start-ups, music lovers will be able to access Spotify directly through the Shazam mobile app, meaning they can listen to or buy tracks that they have tagged or found through Shazam.
"Now if you hear a great new track you can identify it, listen to it instantly in its entirety and easily add it to your music collection. That's pretty powerful stuff," said Daniel Ek, chief executive of Spotify.
London-based Shazam identifies and tags tracks from a database of more than 10 million when the user holds a phone up to a piece of music or audio played over a radio, stereo, television or other device.
The service was launched eight years ago and the company is backed by venture capital firms including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Swedish start-up Spotify was founded in 2006 and offers streamed access to millions of music tracks, which consumers can also buy. The service is free to users who put up with ads, or there is a premium, ad-free subscription service.
The company, whose investors include Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing, has 10 million users in Europe, including 750,000 premium subscribers, and is expected to expand to the United States soon.
Users of Shazam's premium apps on the Apple iPhone and phones running on Google's Android software will be able to access the new service immediately. The basic Shazam free app will include the Spotify feature later this quarter.
(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan, editing by Paul Casciato)
Credit: Reuters (www.reuters.com)
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