Shazam Celebrates Its 20th Anniversary

The popular music search service Shazam celebrates its 20th anniversary. According to the service, it has surpassed 70 billion song recognitions with 225 million monthly listeners. In addition, Shazam has introduced a special playlist of the songs most frequently mentioned in each calendar year over the last 20 years.

Shazam reports that its global charts help identify emerging talent such as Masked Wolf, whose track 'Astronaut In The Ocean' was the most popular track in 2021. Shazam also helps to spot local artists, such as Nigerian singer CKay's "Love Nwantiti Remix," which became the second song ever to exceed a Shazam million in a week.

To mark the anniversary, Shazam has presented notable facts of its history. We have chosen the most interesting ones:

• First ever Shazamed song: "Jeepster" by T. Rex (19 April 2002)1;
• First Shazamed song on the iOS app: "How Am I Different" by Aimee Mann (10 July 2008);
• Fastest track to reach 20 million Shazams: "Dance Monkey" by Tones And I (219 days);
• Drake is the most popular artist of all time with over 350 million Shazams;
• The song "Dance Monkey" by Tones And I is the most popular track ever: more than 41 million Shazams.

Shazam was launched in 2002 as a text messaging service in the UK, allowing users to identify songs by typing "2580" on their phones and holding them up when a song was playing. In 2008, Shazam appeared in the App Store and on Android, and in 2018 Shazam became part of Apple.