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News Corp. Posts Gain on Strength of Cable Channels

Double-digit growth at News Corporation’s cable channels FX, Fox News and regional sports networks led the company to a 55 percent increase in net income in the three month period that ended Dec. 31, offsetting lingering costs related to a phone-hacking scandal and the cost of an upcoming split of the media conglomerate into two publicly-traded companies.

On Wednesday, News Corporation reported net income of $2.38 billion, or $1.01 per share, compared to $1.06 billion, or $0.42 per share in the same three-month period a year earlier. The gains rested largely on an 18 percent increase in revenue at the company’s cable network segment. Overall, revenue rose 5 percent to $9.43 billion.

On a conference call with analysts, Chase Carey, News Corporation’s president and chief operating officer, said the company would complete its separation into two publicly-traded companies by the end of fiscal year 2013. Fox Group will include the company’s cable channels, 20th Century Fox studio and Fox Bradcasting. The company’s newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, its Harper Collins book publishing unit and a suite of Australian pay-TV assets will make up a new, slimmed down company called News Corporation.

The company’s second quarter results highlighted how disparate Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has become â€" with its cable channels making up more than 60 percent of the company’s overall profit as its publishing business, while stronger than last year, continued to face industrywide headwinds.

News Corporation has faced particular struggles at its British tabloids, which have been the subject of an ongoing investigation into phone-hacking and bribing of public officials. The costs associated with the scandal in Britain appeared to have at least temporarily waned. The company’s gains on Wednesday were only partially offset by the $56 million spent on ongoing investigations related to the closure of the News ! of the World, compared to $87 million spent in the same period of 2011.

Overall, the publishing division reported modest improvements from the same period last year, which Mr. Carey attributed in part to the transformation to digital storytelling. The introduction of the Sunday edition of The Sun in Britain contributed to a $16 million increase in operating income to $234 million. Sluggish advertising revenues at the company’s Australian newspapers continued to drag on the division.

But the real driver of News Corporation’s growth came from its cable channels, which reported operating income of $945 million, a 7 percent increase from the previous year. The company continues to invest in sports rights, including a deal with the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Mr. Carey called speculation about News Corporation introducing a cable sports channel that could compete nationwide with ESPN “the world’s worst kept secret,” but declined to comment on when that channel may premiere. “Almst everywhere we’ve invested in sports around the world it has been not just important, but a cornerstone,” he said.

Mr. Carey also emphasized the importance of continued investment in original programming like the gory anthology series “American Horror Story” and “The Americans,” a spy drama on FX which last week marked the channel’s highest-rated drama premiere.

Affiliate revenue at the cable channels spiked 13 percent at domestic channels and 42 percent at the company’s international channels. Advertising revenue at the domestic cable channels grew 8 percent compared to a year earlier. “Our domestic cable business continued to hit every target we set and execute superbly,” Mr. Carey said.

Broadcast television didn’t fare as well. Sluggish ratings in the fall season at Fox Broadcasting contributed to lower national advertising revenues.

Fox reported a 19 percent increase in operating income, due to retransmission consent agreements with cable and satell! ite opera! tors and an increase in local political advertising. Mr. Carey said he was “disappointed” in ratings for the singing competition series “The X Factor” and had hoped the show would gain momentum. “At the Fox Network it has been no secret that we had a tough fall,” he said, emphasizing that he would stick to the network’s current management team.

The company’s movie division racked up critical and box office successes in Lincoln and Life of Pi, which grossed over $500 million worldwide. The sequel Taken 2 also helped the division in the second quarter, bringing in $375 million in worldwide box office revenue. Still, the film division’s operating income fell slightly to $383 million, compared to $393 million in the same period a year ago.

In a statement, Mr. Murdoch, chief executive and chairman of News Corporation, said the company “seized opportunities to invest in our core businesses for long-term and sustainable growth.” He added: “As we make progress toward the proposedseparation of our entertainment and publishing businesses later this year, I am confident in the future prospects for both businesses.”



Magazines React To Post Office Cutbacks: \'The Friday Evening Post\'

The magazine industry, which has already been hurt by advertising declines and the loss of readers, spent Wednesday afternoon reeling from the latest news that they no longer would be able to get magazines delivered on Saturdays.

Magazine publishers were especially surprised at how quickly the new policy is expected to take effect. Postal Service officials plan to stop delivering mail on Saturdays as early as Aug. 5th.

The Magazine Publishers Association issued a statement on Wednesday afternoon saying that it feared magazines that were published weekly would be most affected by the news. That is a segment of the magazine market that has been especially hard hit by consumers getting more of their news online. Newsweek, for example, stopped its print publication late last year.

Officials with the Magazine Publishes Association said they had testified in 2011 that cutting Saturday delivery would mean magazines would have to make major changes in how they were run. Most magazine publishers try to get issues to readers on Fridays and Saturdays so that they can catch up on magazine reading over the weekend. It appeared from early conversations with magazine executives that they simply would have to encourage their eager readers to get more of their content online.

Ali Zelenko, a spokeswoman for Time, said in a statement that the magazine “has been anticipating this possibility for a while and we are preparing plans to continue timely delivery of the magazine to our subscribers.” She added that subscribers would be able to get their content on tablets and at Time.com> as early as Thursday. Time magazine closes on Wednes! days and delivers issues to readers by Friday, Saturday and Monday.

Steven Kotok, chief executive officer of the magazine The Week, said that he would readjust the magazine’s publishing schedule. The Week is currently printed on Wednesdays so that readers receive it by Friday “with Saturday as the fail-safe”.

“We will move The Week’s close time either a day earlier or a couple of days later to ensure the magazine our readers receive is just as timely after the change as it is now,” Mr. Kotok said. “We will make that decision based on what works best for The Week’s readers, who pay a premium price to receive their magazine each week.”

The news was especially shocking to celebrity weeklies, which have been competing with online Web sites delivering gossip far faster than weekly news. Titles like People, which closes on Tuesdays, are typically delivered in the mail to subscribers by Friday and Saturday.

Claudia DiRomualdo, a spokeswoman for People, said the magazine as “making adjustments to ensure that our readers receive People when they expect it.” She added, “Our all access and digital only subscribers can already get our magazine content on the tablet as early as Thursday.”



Things Get Rough on Twitter Over Gun Debate

Twitter is often full of short-burst, back-and-forth argument, but Clara Jeffery, the co-editor of Mother Jones, found out that the debate can turn dark after tweeting last Saturday about the death of Chris Kyle, an ex-sniper who was killed at a gun range by a fellow veteran he was trying to help. (Hat tip to Peter Sterne for putting together a list of the tweets on Storify.)

Advocates for gun rights were enraged and immediatly began tweeting outrage at Ms. Jeffery. The velocity increased after her tweet was posted on Twitchy, the Twitter aggregator run by Michelle Malkin, the conservative commentator.

Many of the tweets wouldn’t meet the language standards at The New York Times, but here are a few of the more printable ones.

@HeidiL_RN advised Ms. Jeffery to “Erase those disrespectful tweets now,” suggesting if she did not, “You will regret this.”

In general, many of the tweets accused Ms. Jeffery of politicizing a tragedy immediately after it happened, but the level of threat and misogyny in the responses surprised her.

“I’m used to debating and defending what I saw on Twitter and elsewhere, but in this instance there were immediate threats made on me and my family,” she said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “I felt bullied, and there were times in there where I felt worried.”

It was an odd circumstance where many were using free speech to go after someone else who was engaging in the same. Ms. Jeffery said that after the initial barrage, she received vocal support on Twitter and back-channel e-mails from people she called “prominent conservatives” who told her to “keep her chin up.”

“The anonymity of ocial media is important and played a big role in the Arab Spring, but in this instance people hit behind their avatars to say really hateful things,” she said. “If they scare you into not participating in the debate, then there can’t really be a debate.”



\'Smash\' Premiere Falls Short, Loses Viewers

It may be time for NBC to change the title of its Broadway drama, “Smash.” After its second-season premiere Tuesday night, the show might more appropriately be called, “Smithereens.”

That would best describe what the ratings for Tuesday’s episode are likely to have done to the show’s future: blown it to bits. “Smash,” which NBC extensively retooled after disappointing viewers who initially responded well to its pilot episode, fell a staggering 71 percent in viewership from its opening episode last season.

Possibly even worse, the show dropped 39 percent from last season’s finale, after “Smash” had already been subjected to a critical battering for its season-long deterioration.

The bad news continued in the pattern of viewers leaving the show throughout its two-hour length. It started out with 5.2 million viewers at 9 p.m.; that fell to 4.47 million at 9:30; 4.22 million at 10; and to 3.96 million at 10:30.

NBC most cares abut reaching viewers between the ages of 18 and 49, because that is the group it sells to advertisers, and “Smash” fell especially hard among that audience. It started weakly with just a 1.3 rating among that group for its first half-hour; by its last half-hour it was down to a 1.0. The average of a 1.1 was by far the worst performance Tuesday night for any show on the major networks.

Last season, “Smash” benefited from being placed behind NBC’s music-based hit, “The Voice.” This season it does not have that protection, which was one reason it was exposed so badly. Another was ABC’s decision to try to beat “Smash” early by adding a special edition of “The Bachelor” head-to-head against it.

That strategy worked: “The Bachelor” averaged almost eight million viewers and a 2.6 rating in the 18-to-49 category.



Cable TV Revenues Helps Spur Time Warner Profit

The cable television business helped propel Time Warner to a 51 percent increase in net income and offset weakness in magazine publishing and movies in the three months that ended Dec. 31.

The media company said Wednesday that an increase in advertising revenue and subscription fees paid by cable and satellite companies to carry channels like TNT and TBS helped lift net income in the fourth quarter to $1.17 billion, or $1.21 a share, up from $773 million, or 76 cents a share, in the same three-month period last year. Revenues remained flat at $8.2 billion.

The results underscore the widening gap between the fast-growing cable television business and the more challenged magazine publishing industry and, to a lesser degree, the movie businesses.

Time Warner said Wednesday its board had approved $4 billion in stock buybacks and that it would raise its quarterly dividend by 11 percent to 28.75 cents per share.

Jeffrey L. Bewkes, Time Warner’s chairman and chief executive, called the able television business the “core of the company.” He praised the premium cable channel HBO and the interest fueled by returning series like “Game of Thrones” and “True Blood” and new original series like “Girls.” HBO saw an increase in domestic subscribers in the quarter, the company reported.

At the same time, Time Inc., the nation’s largest magazine publisher, readied for layoffs of 6 percent of its global workforce, cutbacks that it announced last week. Time Warner estimated the reductions would cost an estimated $60 million in restructuring charges, which will be reported in the first quarter of 2013.

Revenue at the television networks, which include TNT, TBS, and CNN, rose 5 percent to $3.67 billion in the quarter. Subscription and advertising revenues at Time Warner’s suite of cable channels grew 7 percent and 3 percent, respectively, in the quarter, compared with last year. An increase in the number of National Basketball Associa! tion games on Turner channels, as well as coverage of the presidential election on CNN, led to higher ratings.

Mr. Bewkes said that even with the boon from election coverage, CNN’s ratings disappointed. He praised the recent choice of Jeff Zucker, a former chief executive of NBC Universal, to lead CNN. “I’m optimistic that with the new leadership we’ve announced, CNN will once again fulfill the promise of its iconic brand,” he said on a conference call with analysts.

Revenue at the Warner Brothers studio fell 4 percent in the quarter to $3.7 billion, due largely to a tough comparison with 2011, which included the home entertainment release of the popular “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.” The performance of “Argo” and “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” boosted Warner Brothers’ performance in the quarter and contributed to a 29 percent increase in operating income to $522 million.

Last week, Time Warner announced that Kevin Tsujihara, currently the headof the studio’s home entertainment division, would succeed Barry M. Meyer as chief executive of Warner Brothers. “I chose him because he’s got the greatest breadth of experience across Warner’s businesses,” Mr. Bewkes said Wednesday.

Time Inc., the publisher of People, Sports Illustrated and InStyle, represents a small part of Time Warner’s overall business, but nevertheless continued to weigh on the company’s overall results. Revenues at Time Inc. declined 7 percent to $967 million, while advertising revenues fell 4 percent, or $24 million. Subscription revenues remained flat.

For the full fiscal year, which also ended Dec. 31, Time Warner reported net income of $3 billion, or $3.09 per share, compared with $2.9 billion, or $2.71 per share in 2011. In the full fiscal year, revenues decreased 1 percent to $28.7 billion.



Replaying Super Bowl Ads\' Effectiveness

Given that Super Bowl Sunday is the biggest day of the year for advertising as well as for football, Madison Avenue waits each year after the game with bated breath for the results of the myriad analyses, polls and surveys of consumer responses to the commercials.

What follows is a roundup of some of the information and data released on Monday and Tuesday, after the conclusion of Super Bowl XLVII.

AddThis: AddThis, a data company, tracks what is called brand lift, the difference between online conversations about sponsors on Super Bowl Sunday and the online conversations about them on six previous Sundays.

The sponsor that enjoyed the largest brand lift, up 634 percent, was Anheuser-Busch, part of Anheuser-Busch InBev, which was the exclusive beer sponsor of the game with six commercials. GoDaddy, with two commercials in the game, followed closelybehind, with a brand lift of 626 percent.

The sponsor with the lowest brand lift was the Chrysler Group, according to AddThis, with a decline of 35 percent. That may be attributed to the fact that the company ran two commercials for its Jeep and Ram brands but none for the Chrysler brand.

Anheuser-Busch: One of the six commercials Anheuser-Busch ran was a warmly sentimental spot about a Clydesdale and its trainer. When the company offered an online preview of the commercial last week, it asked for suggestions in social media like Facebook and Twitter for a name for a foal that appears in the spot.

The name chosen, the company said, after it received more than 60,000 comments and direct messages, was Hope.

Coca-Cola: The centerpiece of the Coca-Cola Company’s Super Bowl Sunday was a promotion on a Web site, ! cokechase.com, where consumers could vote to determine which of three groups of thirsty characters competing for a cold Coke in the desert would win the prize. (The winners: showgirls.)

The company said the total number of fan engagements with the campaign - on the special Web site and YouTube - exceeded 11 million, more than projected. And more than 86,000 mentions of the campaign were tracked in social media like Twitter.

The commercial that ran after the game ended on Sunday night, revealing the showgirls’ victory, will be repeated on Wednesday and Thursday on Fox during “American Idol,” which Coca-Cola sponsors. An additional commercial, featuring a character named Vincent who originally had only a small part in the campaign, is to be shown on cable channels this week, the company said.

Dachis Group: The Budweiser commercial about the Clydesdale finished first among the Super Bowl spots in so-called content virality, according to data from the Dachis Group, which specializes in social marketing. That spot generated 310,000 “likes” and shares in social media, the company said, about double the second-place finisher, the Bud Light brand also sold by Anheuser-Busch.

The game sponsor with the most positive conversations in social media, the Dachis Group said, was Pepsi-Cola, attributing that to the brand’s sponsorship of the halftime show. The game sponsor with the most negative conversations, the company said, was GoDaddy, attributing that to the first of the brand’s two commercials in the game, which featured a lengthy kiss between the supermodel Bar Refaeli and an actor, Jesse Heiman, portraying a nerd.

(GoDaddy said in a statement that it was pleased with the response to both its commercials because Monday was th! e “bigg! est sales day in company history” - “not just in relation to the Super Bowl” but the “biggest ever.”)

Kantar Media: The highest-rated commercial, according to data from the Kantar Media division of WPP, was not from a marketer but rather from CBS, the network that broadcast the game.

The commercial, promoting the CBS series “Person of Interest,” came at 10:31 p.m., at the two-minute warning at the end of the game. (That was also the case for the highest-rated commercial in the Kantar Media data for the Super Bowl last year.)

CBS ran 42 promotions during Super Bowl XLVII, Kantar Media reported; the network broadcasting the game always includes a hefty load of spots to promote its own shows.

The highest-rated commercial from a marketer, according to Kantar Media, was for Samsung Mobile, which ran just before the “Person of Interest” promotion, at 10:29 p.m.

Frank N. Magid Associates: The company teamed with React Labs on Suday night for what it calls its Magid Advertising Performance research, asking consumers which commercials engaged them and generated buying intent.

The top commercial in the game, according to Magid, was the Budweiser spot, and the bottom commercial was one of two for Subway, which promoted a special “February” sandwich sale.

TiVo: The TiVo Research and Analytics division of TiVo, the digital video recorder company, said that a commercial for Taco Bell was the “most engaging” of the game, according to its data, compiled in 30,000 households with TiVo service.

The most engaging moment in the Super Bowl, however, was a play in the game (the final whistle) rather than a commercial, TiVo reported. In some previous years, a commercial turned out to be played back more in TiVo households being surveyed than any part of the game.

Visibl! e Measure! s: According to the True Reach data from Visible Measures - gauging the performance of video clips released by Super Bowl sponsors as well as clips uploaded by consumers across the Web - the most-watched commercial of Super Bowl XLVII was a spot for the Toyota RAV4 featuring the comedian Kaley Cuoco as a modern-day genie with an attitude.

The Toyota RAV4 video had 16.3 million True Reach views as of Monday, Visible Measures reported, more than 4 million views ahead of No. 2, a commercial for the new Mercedes-Benz CLA that featured Willem Dafoe, Usher and Kate Upton.

The ranking of the top videos on the Visible Measures list may change, the company said, because about half the overall views for Super Bowl spots take place after the game. Last year, when there were more than 400 million total video views, more than 180 million took place through the Thursday after the game.

Fox News and Dick Morris Part Ways

The Fox News Channel has declined to renew its contract with Dick Morris, a spokeswoman for the channel confirmed Tuesday, three months after Mr. Morris was widely derided for predicting a landslide victory for Mitt Romney in the Nov. 6 presidential election.

Mr. Morris is scheduled to appear on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” on Wednesday. He has yet to comment publicly on his separation from Fox, where he has been a regular guest on programs like “Hannity” for years.

Media Matters, the anti-Fox media monitoring group that has called Mr. Morris “America’s Worst Pundit,” has documented what it calls his “vast array of ethical conflicts,” like the time last year when he auctioned a tour of the Fox News headquarters at a Republican fundraiser. Mr. Morris was reportedly reprimanded for doing so.

But it was his commentary about the presidential race that gained the most attention last year

Many pundits made failed predictions about Mr. Romney, but Mr. Morris’s flubs were notorious. While other conservatives hedged, Mr. Morris said the day before the election, “We’re going to win by a landslide. It will be the biggest surprise in recent American political history. It will rekindle a whole question as to why the media played this race as a nail-biter, where in fact I think that Romney is going to win by quite a bit. My own view is that Romney is going to carry 325 electoral votes.”

Mr. Romney won 206 electoral votes. President Obama won 332.

Shortly after the election, the New York magazine writer Gabriel Sherman reported that Mr. Morris and another prominent pundit on Fox, the former Bush strategist Karl Rove, had been benc! hed. “Inside Fox News, Morris’s Romney boosterism and reality-denying predictions became a punch line,” wrote Mr. Sherman, who is writing a book about Fox.

Last month, Fox renewed Mr. Rove’s contract.



The Breakfast Meeting: Liberty Global Buys Virgin Media and How to Talk About \"House of Cards,\" Sans Spoilers

The international cable company Liberty Global agreed on Tuesday to buy the British cable company Virgin Media for about $16 billion, Mark Scott and Eric Pfanner write in The Times. The deal gives Liberty Global access to Europe’s largest cable market and pits Liberty Global’s owner, the American billionaire John C. Malone, against Rupert Murdoch, the biggest shareholder in Britain’s pay-TV provider British Sky Broadcasting. The takeover ranks as one of the 10 largest cable deals of all time, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

Netflix released all 13 episodes of its new political thriller series “House of Cards” simultaneously, raising thorny questions about how best to communicate about a show that allows viewers to immediately devour an entire season. The show, which stars Kevin Spacey and has received largely positive reviews, creates problems for viewers who hope to discuss it on socil media without becoming spoilers, Brian Stelter writes. Fans of the show have worked out several methods for talking about it safely, like starting their Facebook posts or Tweets by saying “I’m in No. 5″ or titling a blog post with the warning “If You’ve Seen All of House of Cards, Let’s Discuss.” One thing’s for certain: with more original shows in production for Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, this conundrum is not going away soon.

The Church of Scientology ran an advertisement promoting a gentler, mildly individualistic view of the religion during the Super Bowl, Tanzina Vega and Michael Cieply report. It called on “the curious, the inquisitive, the seekers of knowledge” to â! €œdare to think for yourself, to look for yourself, to make up your own mind.” The commercial appeared after several months of mounting accusations against the church, including an article in Vanity Fair about Katie Holmes’s experience and Lawrence Wright’s investigative book “Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief.” Karin Pouw, a spokeswoman for the church, said the ad was not a direct response to Mr. Wright’s book.

Luna, a nutrition bar marketed for women, has released a new web series called “Debunking the Diet” in an effort to promote their brand in a more engaging manner than a straightforward advertisement, Andrew Adam Newman reports. The spots are two to three minutes long and feature the Funny or Die comedian Erin Gibson questioning women about their dietary needs before detailing the correct requirements in a lab. Luna has focused more on event sponsorship, social media promotion and branded content like “Debunking the Diet” than on traditional commercials. In 2011 the brand earned $180.1 million, a 9.6 percent share of the energy and nutrition bar category.

A Calvin Klein ad featuring the ludicrously-toned male model Matthew Terry during the Super Bowl may have caused more social media uproar than any other. Stuart Emmrich collects some of the best responses. Chris Kluwe, the Minnesota Vikings punter who stood up for same sex marriage during the season, Tweeted: And yes, the Calvin Klein one objectified men just as much as GoDaddy did women. I guess we’re equal now Hooray



The Breakfast Meeting: Liberty Global Buys Virgin Media and How to Talk About \"House of Cards,\" Sans Spoilers

The international cable company Liberty Global agreed on Tuesday to buy the British cable company Virgin Media for about $16 billion, Mark Scott and Eric Pfanner write in The Times. The deal gives Liberty Global access to Europe’s largest cable market and pits Liberty Global’s owner, the American billionaire John C. Malone, against Rupert Murdoch, the biggest shareholder in Britain’s pay-TV provider British Sky Broadcasting. The takeover ranks as one of the 10 largest cable deals of all time, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

Netflix released all 13 episodes of its new political thriller series “House of Cards” simultaneously, raising thorny questions about how best to communicate about a show that allows viewers to immediately devour an entire season. The show, which stars Kevin Spacey and has received largely positive reviews, creates problems for viewers who hope to discuss it on socil media without becoming spoilers, Brian Stelter writes. Fans of the show have worked out several methods for talking about it safely, like starting their Facebook posts or Tweets by saying “I’m in No. 5″ or titling a blog post with the warning “If You’ve Seen All of House of Cards, Let’s Discuss.” One thing’s for certain: with more original shows in production for Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, this conundrum is not going away soon.

The Church of Scientology ran an advertisement promoting a gentler, mildly individualistic view of the religion during the Super Bowl, Tanzina Vega and Michael Cieply report. It called on “the curious, the inquisitive, the seekers of knowledge” to â! €œdare to think for yourself, to look for yourself, to make up your own mind.” The commercial appeared after several months of mounting accusations against the church, including an article in Vanity Fair about Katie Holmes’s experience and Lawrence Wright’s investigative book “Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief.” Karin Pouw, a spokeswoman for the church, said the ad was not a direct response to Mr. Wright’s book.

Luna, a nutrition bar marketed for women, has released a new web series called “Debunking the Diet” in an effort to promote their brand in a more engaging manner than a straightforward advertisement, Andrew Adam Newman reports. The spots are two to three minutes long and feature the Funny or Die comedian Erin Gibson questioning women about their dietary needs before detailing the correct requirements in a lab. Luna has focused more on event sponsorship, social media promotion and branded content like “Debunking the Diet” than on traditional commercials. In 2011 the brand earned $180.1 million, a 9.6 percent share of the energy and nutrition bar category.

A Calvin Klein ad featuring the ludicrously-toned male model Matthew Terry during the Super Bowl may have caused more social media uproar than any other. Stuart Emmrich collects some of the best responses. Chris Kluwe, the Minnesota Vikings punter who stood up for same sex marriage during the season, Tweeted: And yes, the Calvin Klein one objectified men just as much as GoDaddy did women. I guess we’re equal now Hooray



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.



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