Media engagement company Shazam has announced that America Móvil, the largest telco in the Americas, controlled by Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man, has invested $40 million in the company, with the pair formalising a strategic business collaboration for the Americas. The investment will help accelerate Shazam’s ongoing growth in music, continued expansion into television and the development of innovative new products.

“Shazam is defining a new category of media engagement which combines the power of mobile with traditional broadcast media and advertising to create compelling value added experiences for consumers, content providers and brands.” said Slim. “We are excited to bring this innovation to América Móvil subscribers as we continue to further differentiate our services as the market leader in Latin America.”

“We are delighted to welcome América Móvil as an investor in Shazam as we execute on our mission to enable people to engage with content and brands in the easiest way possible whether they are interacting with television, music or in retail environments,” said Shazam Executive Chairman, Andrew Fisher. “This investment will help support our continued expansion as we seek to become an increasingly important part of people’s everyday lives. With over 350 million users we are excited to be partnering with América Móvil to further accelerate our growth throughout the Americas.”

Since its last round of funding in 2011, Shazam has achieved tremendous growth and expanded its service from music into television and advertising with the following results:

• The user base has more than doubled to 350 million people around the globe
• The number of monthly active users has tripled to over 70 million as people increasingly use Shazam on their mobile device to have a deeper experience of music, TV and advertising
• Sustained growth of more than two million new users each week.
• Sales of digital goods are now over $300 million a year through affiliate partners such as iTunes, a figure that is doubling annually.

“Shazam’s expansion into television has moved the company into an entirely new phase of growth with interactive advertising generating new sources of revenue and partnerships with broadcasters encouraging a broader group of people to use Shazam more frequently,” said Shazam CEO Rich Riley. “We look forward to working with América Móvil to launch these services in the region as we seek to increase our ubiquity throughout the world.”

In the last year, Shazam has updated the design and increased the speed of its app for iOS and Android. In adition, earlier this month, Shazam launched a new app for iPad which included a new feature, Auto-Tagging, which helps people constantly recognise and engage with any media playing around them, automatically.

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