There was an article on here a few months ago that talked about Shazam's ability to predict hits months in advance.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/the-shaz...

As far as I know, Siri uses Shazam to find music. Example from my life: "Siri, what song is it playing now?" "It's xxx". Then I got home, opened iTunes, found that song in my latest searches and bought that album. So clearly that's a moneymaker for iTunes, artist and they'll pay for that.

May be Shazam has direct relations with major music brands who'll pay for each successful search.

Have you ever noticed that the app has links where you can purchase the song that it found for you?

There is a premium version of the app and they also have partnerships.

They seem to have a value add thing for TV adverts, I notice it a lot when I'm at my mum's and the TV is on. You see a pulsing shazam logo and presumably you shazam the advert and they redirect you to something from the advertiser. I assume they get paid there, maybe pretty well if they're really adding to the value of expensive TV ads.

Here is one article about partnership with WMG:

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/digital-and-mobil...

Think about the value of the data: they can predict trends long, long before anyone else can. After all, using Shazam almost equates to a "like". The music industry can figure out who likes what in practically realtime.

From its product - which is the users, who else?