Aside from radio plays, one of the best ways for an artist to gain publicity is through a sync deal, but they’re often uncredited.
Apart from radio and music channel plays, one of the best ways for a music artist to get their music out there is by being featured on an ad, TV show or film. The more popular the show/film and the more frequently the ad is aired, the more publicity the artist gains.
Sadly, it’s not common practice for TV shows and ads to credit the musicians behind their soundtracks. As an artist, scoring a sync deal for a popular show or frequent ad is just half the battle. Such efforts are relatively futile if there’s no way for their audience to discover the artist behind the track. How can you Google a song without knowing the name of the artist or track? This is especially difficult if the track lacks lyrics. Thankfully, mobile app Shazam was created, opening up a whole new gateway for artist discovery.
The smartphone app debuted in 2008 with the launch of Apple’s App Store, and just five years later, Shazam became one of the top ten most popular apps in the world. Today, hundreds of millions of users all over the world use Shazam to discover a song they like but don’t recognise. It is the most popular app in music discovery. Even music labels use it to discover stars of the future and hand out record deals.
However, a song cannot be identified on Shazam if it’s not in its database. An track must be uploaded to the Shazam music database in order to be ‘Shazamable’. As a result, it is important that artists ensure their distribution company includes Shazam along with Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, etc. Even if they’re on most major music platforms, if they’re not on Shazam, they could be missing out on being discovered by prospective fans and potential record deals.
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