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Shazam hooks up with Instagram Stories for another way to share songs

Shazam

Shazam’s latest update for iDevices lets you add songs to Instagram Stories in a few taps.

Version 12.3 of Apple-owned Shazam landed this week, and the new feature is super-simple to use.

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All you do is Shazam a song in the usual way to identify it, tap on the three dots to the right of the “buy” or “add to” button, and then on the share button at the bottom of the display. You’ll then see a list of options that should now include Instagram Stories. Select it and your Story will display the name of the track, the artist, and how many Shazams it has received to date.

Any ‘grammers who view the Story can, if they’re not yet using the app, tap on the “more on Shazam” link to learn more about it.

Shazam names any song in seconds

Shazam enables users to identify songs in a matter of seconds simply by listening to it, and works anywhere with any audio source. Once the track has been identified, you get a ton of options about what to do next, such as open it in streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music, buy it on iTunes, or share it via your social media feeds.

The free app has been downloaded over a billion times globally, with people using it to identify music tracks more than 20 million times each day.

Apple completed its acquisition of Shazam in September, 2018, making it free of ads in the process. The Cupertino, California-based tech giant reportedly paid $400 million to close the deal.

“Apple and Shazam have a long history together,” Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music, said at the time, explaining that Shazam was one of the first apps available when it threw open the doors to its App Store 10 years ago.

London-based Shazam launched its music ID service in 2002, though it wasn’t until shortly after the arrival of the iPhone in 2007 that it really took off.

The latest update featuring support for Instagram Stories can be found via your smartphone’s App Store app, or by hitting this iTunes link. There’s no word yet on the feature coming to Android.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
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