Rdio and Shazam have been working together since last Autumn in the US, with the streaming service offering free streams of full tracks for Shazam users when they tag music. Now that ‘Listen Free on Rdio’ partnership has expanded beyond the US to the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Mexico. It works in the free and paid versions of Shazam’s app on iOS and Android, with Shazam saying the deal has a footprint of 120m+ users across the five new countries plus the US. Note, that’s out of Shazam’s all-users-ever 300m figure: recently, the company said its monthly active users total is more like 60m. If the same ratio of active users to all-users-ever applies, the footprint for the Rdio partnership is more like 12m monthly active users. Still significant for Rdio as it tries to widen the funnel for tis 14-day free mobile trial. Should Shazam be worried about cannibalising sales of music downloads through its app? Probably not: even though it fuels $300m of download sales a year, at iTunes affiliate rates that’s $15m of annual revenues – and Shazam is shooting for much bigger income through its growing TV and advertising business.
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Tools: Kaiber
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