Shazam Premium App

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Popular music mobile application Shazam plans to charge $4.99 for a premium app that includes faster searching, music recommendations, charts, and car mode to identify all songs played on the radio.

Nicknamed Shazam "Encore," the service offers much more value than the free Shazam app. But I don't think music listeners will take the bait.

The free Shazam app already accomplishes what many people have problems doing, identifying tracks. With over 8 million tracks, Shazam is capable of identifying the song you're looking for. The beautify is in Shazam's simplicity.

However, I do think the free app could be a little faster. Right now it takes about a minute for the app to identity the song. That's too long. We need instantaneous. Of course Shazam doesn't have every song, particularly remixes. Even if it closely spotted the original track based on the song algorithm that would be a success.

The Shazam app should remain free. Instead of charging for the app, it should monetize by taking a finder's fee, perhaps 10% of each downloaded track. That would absolve the business from worrying about making money.

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