You might not recognize the chart-toppers on Apple Music’s newly-launched Shazam chart. And that’s exactly the point.Just this morning, Apple Music launched its Shazam Discovery Top 50 list, a weekly global ranking of 50 artists. The list is designed to highlight emerging artists that are trending.
The new chart will be updated every Tuesday and is available exclusively on Apple Music. The music recognition app handles over 20 million requests per day and has over 1 billion downloads.
Artists at the top of the list as it launched include Ohana Bam, A$ton Wyld, Tones and I, and Regard. And if you don’t recognize all of those names, join the club — though you might be staring at a list of tomorrow’s superstars.
The announcement shared by Apple Music describes a little bit about how the new list works. The ranked songs on the list are all at different points in their life cycle. Many of the artists represented on the list are up-and-coming. Others are experiencing momentum based on the number of Shazams their content has received.
It all boils down to actual recognitions on devices, worldwide.
The chart ranks songs that are trending in the United States and ten other countries. Apple says more countries will be featured soon.
This new playlist marks the first time Apple has done something exclusive with Shazam since buying the service in December of 2017. That deal was rumored to be worth around $401 million and closed in September of 2018. That’s about 50% less than Shazam’s rumored $1 billion valuation in 2015, though Apple is now sitting on a juicy pile of song (and user) data.
At the time, Apple vice president Oliver Schusser had high praise for Shazam. Shazam is currently integrated with Apple Music, a nice competitive advantage against Spotify and others. Users can quickly add identified songs to a customized playlist, just one of the perks.
Many Android users were afraid Shazam would go iOS-exclusive, but instead, Apple removed the ads and kept it available.With an install base of over one billion between iOS and Android, Apple has a lot of data to draw from.
You can bet we’ll see more exclusive playlists driven by Shazam data to help set Apple Music apart from other streaming services. Podcasts aren’t going to be enough, especially since rival Spotify is dedicated to spending $500 million this year alone to take down Apple’s podcast dominance.
