Shazam Expands Catalog Through Deal With Online Dance Store Beatport

D.J.’s in nightclubs sometimes brag that the songs they play are obscure enough to be “un-Shazam-able.” That distinction will soon be harder to attain, however, as Shazam, the popular name-that-song app, expands its database through a deal with Beatport, the leading dance-music download store.

Shazam, which says it has 275 million users, has become one of the world’s most popular apps by quickly “tagging,” or identifying, songs as they play, whether on the radio, on television or in a D.J.’s set. Dance music is one of its most popular genres, making up 31 of its 100 most tagged songs last year, Will Mills, Shazam’s director of music and content, said in an interview on Tuesday.

Even though Shazam has a catalog of more than 25 million songs, it is not enough â€" particularly i the fast-moving dance genre, in which songs uploaded from a producer’s laptop can become instant underground hits. That is where Beatport comes in. Founded in 2004, Beatport has become the de facto central store for dance downloads, often getting them long before other retailers. The company says it releases as many as 20,000 new tracks each week, about a third of them not available elsewhere.

Shazam says the deal will add about 1.5 million songs from Beatport to its database, which when tagged can send users back to Beatport to buy the tracks; users can also watch a YouTube video, for example, or send a note about it to their Facebook contacts. As with Shazam’s other deals, the company collects an affiliate fee for sales that it facilitates through the app.

The access to Beatport’s catalog could also give Shazam an advantage over its closest competitor, SoundHound, which la! st year said it had reached 100 million users. Shazam also has a few tricks that can help in a dance club â€" for example, it can identify a song even if it has been sped up or slowed down, as D.J.’s often do, or if other sounds interfere, like shouting patrons or the occasional bullhorn.

“There is always going to be an element of D.J.’s putting on effects and layer sounds,” Mr. Mills said. “We’ve got that bit sorted.”

Ben Sisario writes about the music industry. Follow @sisario on Twitter.