Tracking The Future With Shazam’s Music Spotters

The digital music era and the increasing popularity of music-spotting apps like Shazam have given rise to some unusual but interesting jobs. “Music sourcer” is such vocation created by Shazam that involves the incumbent to track down small-time artists and independent titles that may potentially become popular and hence searched by its users in the near future. Charles Slomovitz is one such music sourcer who forages music blogs, local record stores and college radio stations among others, to unearth a track or an album that may not exist in Shazam’s database but looks promising to get attention from some of its 100 million users.

NY Times elaborates on the daily work of a music sourcer:

The hunt keeps Mr. Slomovitz on his toes. Every morning, he skims dozens of music blogs, checking for new releases he might have missed, as well as the iTunes, Amazon.com and Billboard charts, and blog aggregators like the Hype Machine.

Most weeks he also goes to local record stores to see if there is something in stock he has not heard of, or if older albums are being remastered or reissued. And he listens to local radio stations, especially near universities.

“If all the college radio stations are playing something new that’s coming out of a school in Connecticut, that should be in there,” he said.

New music has infiltrated many popular television shows, like “Gossip Girl” and children’s shows like “Yo Gabba Gabba!” Mr. Slomovitz says he pays close attention to which bands and songs are playing on those shows and a handful of others.

Shazam

NY Times: “In Digital Era, Music Spotters Feed a Machine”