Ben Sisario from the New York Times reported “the Warner Music Group, the company behind Bruno Mars, Wiz Khalifa and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, will announce a deal with the music app Shazam that will create a label imprint for new artists who are discovered through Shazam.” The deal would allow Warner executives to see data that shows trends in the music industry while allowing Shazam to take another step in their mission to become “a conduit for various forms of content.”
Warner’s deal with Shazam is their next big move since acquiring Parlophone Label Group for $765 million in 2013 (A link to the full breakdown of investments into the music industry can be found below). As Warner expands their presence in European markets, information analysis will play a key role in understanding and capitalizing on trends found through their newly accessible data. Whether or not this data will lead to more top hits is unclear as Jim Lucchese, chief executive of the Echo Nest, said that the challenge is not so much getting access to information as having the expertise to interpret it. Acting quickly on the artists that are trending will also play a key role in deciding what record label acquires the new talent.
Warner Music Group’s reputation within the music industry is that of a traditional media company. As they have been working to understand mobile devices and the internet to help identify breakout artists, their partnership with Shazam has been referred to by others in the industry as a rather clever deal. However, as the information is analyzed, it is simply not enough to identify the breakout artists but Warner must invest money and attention to these new stars to ultimately feed their music back into these mobile services.
VMG Network provides a brief explanation of how Shazam works and counts down the top 10 songs “Shazam’d” in 2013 in the video below:
Ben Sisario’s article in the Times:
Investments in the music industry in 2013: