Now that we’ve quantified Shazam’s track record of predicting hits, including its positives and its possible pitfalls, here are three specific recommendations on how to use Shazam alongside your new music research and other music popularity measures in your programming arsenal:
1) Use Shazam to spot potential hits that are on the edges of your format.
For CHR, Shazam isn’t going to give you an early read on mainstream Pop songs from well-known artists, but for EDM and Dance-oriented tracks, songs that are big in other formats, and other songs that are sonically different than your average hit song, Shazam can help you spot songs that will ultimately catch on with your audience
2) Don’t rely exclusively on Shazam to spot potential hits.
Shazam can help spot some future hits, but not all of them. In addition to examining similar stations’ playlists and sales data, be sure to also look for songs that are big on streaming to find potential hits. Songs that break first on streaming aren’t going to show up early on Shazam.
3) Don’t look to Shazam to tell you which songs listeners still love.
When listeners stop Shazaming a song, it doesn’t mean listeners are tired of hearing it, it simply means they learned what they wanted to learn about the song from the Shazam app. Now that they know the artist and title, they no longer need to Shazam it. Dropping a song because fewer listeners are Shazaming it would be a huge mistake. It still remains that the most reliable tool to tell you when your audience is ready for you to move on to something new is customized new music research.
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