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22 years it was first launched in the U.K., ubiquitous music identification app Shazam has announced it has now surpassed 100 billion recognitions.
First launching on Aug. 19 2002, Shazam began its life as an SMS service where users would dial a number, hold up their phones to identify the song being played, and then receive the name and artist via a text message. While it grew in popularity and influence over the years, it was in 2006 that Shazam was launched as an app, before becoming available on both Apple and Android devices in 2008.
By 2011, the service had recognized more than one billion songs, and by the following year, that number had increased to five billion, with the 15 billion milestone following in 2014. In 2017, it was announced that Apple had acquired Shazam for $400 million.
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Now, Apple have announced that Shazam has hit the impressive milestone of 100 billion song recognitions across its lifetime. The news comes just five years after the service celebrated 20 years with news it had surpassed 70 billion recognitions.
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“This monumental milestone not only reflects how much people enjoy using Shazam, but also their appetite for new music,” said Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music and Beats in a stateent.
“Music discovery is at the core of everything we do, and we keep innovating to make sure music lovers around the world can tap the Shazam button no matter where they hear music playing!”
Apple have also shared a handful of statstics to put the 100 billion figure into perspective, noting that the number is equivalent to 12 songs identified for every person on Earth, and that one person would need to use Shazam to identify a song every second for 3,168 years to reach 100 billion.
An Apple Music playlist was also created by the company which features the 100 most-Shazamed songs across the app’s lifetime.
Atop the list is Tones and I’s “Dance Monkey” with 45 million identifications to its name, closely followed by fellow Australian act Gotye and his 2012 Kimbra-featuring hit “Somebody That I Used to Know”.
Passenger’s “Let Her Go”, Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect”, and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ “Can’t Hold Us” round out the top five, with acts such as Lewis Capaldi, Hozier, The Weeknd, KALEO, and Sia completing the top ten.
More than two decades since it was released, Chicago indie veterans Wilco have announced a 20th anniversary edition of their fifth album, A Ghost is Born.
The new deluxe edition package arrives via Nonesuch on February 7th, 2025 and complements the original recording with a myriad new extras.
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Available in both a nine-CD or nine-LP/four-CD format, the packages include the initial album paired with alternates, outtakes, and demos which chart the record’s conception, in addition to a full 2004 concert recording from Boston’s Wang Center and the band’s “fundamentals” workshop sessions.
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In total, 65 previously unreleased tracks are accompanied by a 48-page hardcover book which features liner notes from Grammy-winning writer Bob Mehr and previously unpublished photos. Alongside its announcement, the band have also shared an alternate version of “Handshake Drugs”, recorded at New York’s Sear Sound in November 2003.
Released in June 2004, A Ghost is Born arrived as Wilco‘s fifth album and as the follow-up to 2001’s difficult (though critically-acclaimed) Yanke Hotel Foxtrot. Peaking at No. 8 on the Billboard 200, it was the group’s highest-charting album up to that point, and garnered reviews that equally labelled it their most “difficult and uncompromising album to date” and “the ever-evolving band’s richest work”.
Notwithstanding, the album went on to be named Best Alternative Music Album and Best Recording Package at the 2005 Grammy Awards, and became revered amongst fans as one of Wilco’s best.
“I was worried the album was going to feel like something dark and not me anymore,” frontman Jeff Tweedy told Mehr as part of the record’s new liner notes. “But the album was ahead of me as a person.
“It was the part of me that I was trying to preserve—enthusiastic and furious about the world, as well as open and loving. I reached that in the music, before I could get there emotionally on my own.”
Temperatures rose at the 2024 CMA Awards when Jelly Roll stepped out onstage for his second performance of the night, joined by Keith Urban for a rousing performance of “Liar.” Backdropped by bursts of flames and rhythmic balls of sparks, the two musicians brought the heat, with the “Son of a Sinner” singer passionately belting […]
Paul Simon might be responsible for writing some of music’s most revered songs, but as he’s revealed previously, he’s progressively becoming unable to hear them.
Last year, Simon explained to British paper The Times that he began to experience hearing loss in his left ear while recording his 2023 song cycle, Seven Psalms. “Quite suddenly, I lost most of the hearing in my left ear, and nobody has an explanation for it,” he explained. “So everything became more difficult.”
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Now in a new interview with CBS Mornings, Simon spoke to reporter Anthony Mason about his journey with hearing loss and his search for ways to manage it.
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“It was incredibly frustrating. I was very angry at first that this had happened,” Simon admitted, noting his greatest fear is the possibility or no longer writing or composing. “I guess what I’m most apprehensive about would be if I can’t hear well enough to really enjoy the act of making music,” he added.
Though Simon wrapped up his final tour in 2018, he’s still making sporadic appearances here and there. Most recently, he performed a surprise set at New York City’s Irish Arts Centre, and weeks prior, he performed for The SoHo Sessions as part of a fundraiser for the Stanford Initiative to Cure Hearing Loss
“I’m going through my repertoire and reducing a lot of the choices that I make to acoustic versions. It’s all much quieter,” he explained. “It’s not ‘You Can Call Me Al.’ That’s gone. I can’t do that one.”
As part of his CBS Mornings interview, Simon visited with the Stanford Initiative to Cure Hearing Loss at their Palo Alto, California facilities, discussing how the likes of zebrafish, mice, and other animals are a point of focus for research. While zebrafish have had hearing benefits thanks to a drug which been approved by the FDA, mice are being used as part of gene therapy in an effort to regenerate damaged hair cells.
Per Simon’s own admission though, he tells CBS that his desire to create hasn’t been affected despite his ability to perfectly hear the fruits of his labor.
“You know Matisse, when he was suffering at the end of his life, when he was in bed, he envisioned all these cut-outs and had a great creative period,” he noted. “So I don’t think creativity stops with disability. So far, I haven’t experienced that. And I hope not to.”
With a whopping 44 chart-toppers on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs list, George Strait is a bona fide legend in the genre and beyond. And at the 2024 CMA Awards at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Wednesday (Nov. 20), Strait made a rare public appearance to accept the Willie Nelson lifetime achievement award from the Country Music Association.
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The tribute opened with a fiery-eyed, ferocious Jamey Johnson performing Strait’s 2006 single “Give It Away,” a Hot Country Songs No. 1 hit that Johnson co-wrote. (Johnson made headlines just days ago after being arrested in Tennessee on Sunday and charged with speeding and drug possession; Johnson has spoken about his sobriety journey before, but acknowledges that he sometimes smokes “a joint.”)
Miranda Lambert and Parker McCollum followed with Strait’s 2008 single “Troubadour,” a fitting enough song for the 72-year-old legend given that it’s a meditation on music, aging and legacy (“I was a young troubadour/ When I rode in on a song/ And I’ll be an old troubadour when I’m gone”).
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After that, Strait himself proved he’s far from done, taking the stage with Chris Stapleton for a full-throated duet on “Honky Tonk Hall of Fame” from his recent album Cowboys and Dreamers while his wife, Norma Strait, bopped along from the crowd.
“First of allm, I want to thank my lord and savior Jesus Christ,” Strait said after wrapping his performance and receiving a standing ovation from the crowd (including Luke Combs, who mimed bowing down to Strait). “I want to thank the CMAs for adding my name to the incredible artists on this small list of recipients, hearing the name of the icon Willie Nelson.”
He also thanked “these great artists” who performed his songs on the CMA Awards stage. “It’s amazing to hear y’all do them – I’m so glad I got to ‘em before you,” he said, laughing, and adding, “Not you, Jamey.”
After paying homage to some of his departed associates (fiddle player Gene Elders, road manager Tom Foote and manager Erv Woolsey have all passed away in 2024), Strait paid tribute to his closest companion for more than half a century. “I want to thank my family who are all here tonight. My wife Norma, my son Bubba, his wife Tamara, my grandkids Harvey and Jillian,” Strait said. “Especially Norma, who has supported me for just shy of 53 years – it’s been an amazing 53 years.”
The 2024 CMA Awards took over Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Wednesday night (Nov. 20) to honor country’s brightest stars, from fresh talent like new artist of the year winner Megan Moroney to CMA Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award honoree George Strait. The awards show — hosted by Luke Bryan, Lainey Wilson and Peyton Manning — was […]
Old Dominion made history at the 2024 CMA Awards at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on Wednesday (Nov. 20) evening. Not only did the country outfit nab the 2024 CMA Award for vocal group of the year, but it became the second-most awarded vocal group in the history of the Country Music Association Awards. Explore Explore […]
Post Malone didn’t have much time to chill in his Bridgestone Arena seat at the 2024 Country Music Association Awards in Nashville Wednesday night (Nov. 20). After opening the show 90 minutes earlier with a run through “California Sober” with multiple CMA-winner Chris Stapleton, Posty was back all by his lonesome later in the broadcast […]
For a couple minutes there, Jelly Roll and Brooks & Dunn turned the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville into a church with a spiritual performance of “Believe” at the 2024 Country Music Association Awards Wednesday (Nov. 20). With Kix Brooks on piano and Ronnie Dunn sharing lead vocals with the “Son of a Sinner” singer, the […]
Shaboozey proved that there are way more colors in his musical palette than “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” when he took the stage at the 2024 Country Music Association Awards on Wednesday (Nov. 20). The singer, whose signature song has straddled the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for 18 weeks so far — snagging the […]
