Shazam Entertainment, the mobile music company, today announced its most aggressive roll out to date with the signing of deals to launch the service with mobilkom austria in Austria, Zed Sonera in Italy and TeliaSonera Finland. Shazam launched in the UK last year across all major operators, and Germany this Spring with Vodafone DE. They also signed a license with the Soft Park Group to launch in China. Led by Shazam's International Development Director, Claus Nehmzow, these latest European deals build on Shazam's global strategy and also represent a huge opportunity for the company enabling it to access some of the largest and most established mobile markets in Europe. Combined, the deals in Italy, Finland and Austria will make Shazam's services available to over 50 million mobile phone users across Europe.
The Shazam service will be marketed as Zed-Music Finder in Italy and Mika Biisi in Finland and will be available to all mobile phone users in these countries. In Austria, mobilkom austria will offer Shazam's music recognition service exclusively to A1 customers. The service will work similarly to the services in the UK and Germany. When users hear a song they like they simply dial Shazam's number (which differs in each country), from their mobile, point their mobile towards the music, Shazam cuts the call after thirty seconds, and immediately they learn the name of the song and the artist via text message. The user can then select from an array of options to interact with the song including buying ringtones after the song has been tagged.
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Jerry Roest, CEO of Shazam Entertainment, commented: "As part of our global strategy we have focussed on rolling out mobile music recognition services across Europe. The deals we have announced today in Italy, Austria and Finland form a key part of our European strategy and also include our first international commercial relationships with mobile content partners as well as mobile operators. We will continue to roll out our service in other countries within Europe and beyond."
Anna Puccio, Managing Director of Zed Sonera Italy, said: "This music technology brought by Shazam will put Sonera Zed at the cutting edge of mobile phone telephony. It revolutionises the way consumers can interact with music using their mobiles. We believe it will be a great success in Italy."
Dr. Hannes Ametsreiter, Director of Marketing, Distribution and Customer Services for mobilkom Austria, added: "We are really pleased to be able to offer A1 customers a great new way to interact with music. This music service, that requires only voice and SMS to access the full functionality and so can be used with every standard GSM-phone, will be one of the main products in our upcoming music product portfolio."
Mr. Harri Kivi-Koskinen, Development Director at TeliaSonera Finland commented: " We are confident that Mika Biisi (Finnish slang for 'What's that Song') will become an interesting and useful tool for Finnish mobile phone users with such a memorable name for what is a great consumer service" •
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