Music recommendations started with mixed tapes for me. Recording a tape from other music collections and passing it on to friends was the best way to share new music. Then came the CD Burner, then Napster, then lawsuits, and now it’s pretty much ‘illegal’ to share anything with anyone in any medium.
But Shazam has taken up the challenge of getting users to share music with friends with their new Shazam Friends feature. Essentially the feature lets users tag songs and then see what their friends on Facebook are tagging. It lets you listen to the tracks that your friends have shared, then purchase the music from iTunes and other music services.
It’s a nifty concept, and it’s something that Ping seems to be struggling with. I enjoy sharing music with my friends, my actual real-life friends who share musical tastes with me. I don’t know anyone in my offline life that has gravitated to Ping, but most of them have Shazam and a Facebook account. Shazam Friends has put my music recommendations in front of the people that care about what I’m listening to, and that can’t be said for a lot of other services that are available today.
The update will be available for iPhone users immediately, and it’ll be available for Android users in the near future. I haven’t been able to get the update from iTunes just yet (US or CDN), but it should be available shortly.
Pretty cool stuff.
