Shazam has hit the magic $1 billion valuation mark. After a recent round of funding worth reportedly $30 million, the song-identification and discovery app has found itself joining the billionaire boys club — the real one. Fittingly, according to Shazam Chairman Andrew Fisher in an interview with Bloomberg, "We had a couple of billionaires who participated in the funding round." Fisher also further discussed plans for a potential Shazam IPO saying, "Strengthening the balance sheet gives us more choices about when we would go to the public market."
In an interview last August with Forbes, Shazam CEO Rich Riley discussed the possibility of an IPO or being acquired.
"I'm confident that Shazam will be able to IPO if it wants to in the next few years because of the strong brand, user base and business model," Riley says. "But if it made more sense to be acquired, that could certainly be a choice as well."
Shazam has seen steady growth and investment over the past few years. In 2013, it received $40 million from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, chairman of South American telecom giant America Movil, in exchange for a 10 percent stake in Shazam and the app would be integrated into all new phones on their plans.
Shazam was founded in 2002 and its competitors include SoundHound and Play by Yahoo Music, but both do not have the brand integrations and the advertising business Shazam has.
Shazam has been downloaded more than 500 million times and boats more than 100 million users. It was upgraded in December to give Spotify and Rdio users the ability to listen to full tracks within the Shazam app.
Shazam joins other music platforms and apps Spotify and SoundCloud with billion-dollar valuations. It will be interesting to follow how Shazam continues to grow its market share in the coming months as it tries to increase revenue in the build-up to an eventual IPO.
