CEO Keyvan Mohajer hints that ID of other verticals is in the pipeline.
On Monday, music ID firm SoundHound finally disclosed some stats. And why wouldn't it when the user base has reached 50m and the active engagement of these users results in over four million music searches per day?
Of course, the stats are still some way behind SoundHound's close rival Shazam – which has 150m users and still gets way more mainstream publicity than SoundHound.
And yet, the smaller firm has a good case when it says it's winning the race on innovation.
This rapid acceleration in user numbers was mostly down to the decision to go free and unlimited with searches from November 2010, which pre-dated Shazam's decision to do the same by nearly a year.
Before the switch it cost $4.99 for unlimited song identifications, with the option to get a 'lite' app that delivered five free song IDs per month.
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But after the move to completely free (in fact, there’s still an ad-freevSoundHound Infinity app that you can buy for $4.99) downloads soared, with 45m new additions added in 2011.
However, SoundHound is at pains to stress that the appeal of its app is not solely down to the (lack of) price. It says it's also been rewarded for a commitment to innovation in its tech.
For example, the app was first to support humming to recognise tracks, and also introduced the Hound feature, which lets users speak a track or artist name in order to identify it.
ME sat down with Keyvan Mohajer, CEO of SoundHound, and hummed some questions...
What were the origins of the firm?
We built this voice recognition tech, and started out as a web company. But obviously the web is not the ideal place for voice tech, so mobile was always a big deal for us. At that time there were lots of barriers in the way, with carriers and device makers and so on. Then the iPhone came along and everything changed. We got everyone in a room and said 'that's it – we're going from web to iPhone.'
Are you where you hoped to be now?
Actually, we're ahead of schedule. We've beaten the targets we set ourselves.
What was behind the switch to free last November?
The market changes and you have to change strategy sometimes. So, when we started there was no provision for micropayments and we had to work on a premium paid downloads basis. It worked well for us, even though we had free competitors.
But then we moved to a freemium model in early 2010. Eventually, we realised that people were using up their free allocation from us and then getting their music from other sources. That wasn't what we wanted, so we then moved to an unlimited model.
Where do the revenues come from?
They split between licensing, rev shares on purchases through third parties, advertising and the paid app, which has no ads and extra features.
Who are your licencees?
We're working with Motorola, Samsung, HTC, Acer, KDDI and others.
How does SoundHound differ from other music ID apps?
It's the only platform that can do humming and singing. We built it, we own it and we're very proud of it. Other companies have to licence the tech that powers their services. We don't have to, and that gives us more freedom to innovate around it.
Which begs the obvious question – will SoundHound move beyond music and into other verticals?
Clearly, that's the next phase for us. There are a number of verticals we're looking at, but we have to be adaptive and make the right move at the right time. The opportunities will definitely come. I'm convinced that voice will take over from touch as the next dominant user interface for smartphones. What Apple is doing with Siri will help to popularise the idea, and that can only help us.
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