Shazam on 20 percent of US iPhones, generates $300M in annual digital sales

Speaking with The Guardian at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Shazam's executive vice president of marketing David Jones opened up on how well the service is doing. Shazam, which recently passed the 300 million user mark and added a new iPad app, tags about 10 million songs per day.

The service's users are tapping through to buy the content they're tagging as well, at a clip of about $300 million per year spent on services such as iTunes and Amazon. Most of that revenue is coming from purchased music, but TV shows, films, and apps are growing as a proportion of Shazam-originated sales.

Jones said that 20 percent of all iPhones in the United States used Shazam last month, with that figure between 30 and 40 percent for European countries like France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Shazam is currently adding about two million users per week, with some weeks topping three million new users.

The company plans to continue expanding its offerings, which include the aforementioned television and film tagging. Shazam has run more than 200 ad campaigns for more than 140 brands, with campaigns running between $75,000 and $200,000. Jones is confident in the company's ability to continue growing, but he sees a second-screen advertising market far larger than what the company currently brings in.

"While we're making a ton of money now," he told The Guardian, "compared to the billions of advertising that the networks sell, it's a smaller thing. That's the opportunity."