• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, July 8, 2013

Telecom carrier America Movil has made a $40 million investment in the media companion app Shazam. The widely used mobile app started years ago as a method of identifying music and linking the user to a purchase opportunity. But in recent years the company has focused more intensely on the television and creating second-screen experiences in tandem with on-air programming and advertising. In making the announcement, Shazam also says that its user base has expanded to 350 million people. Of that installed base, the company says 70 million our monthly active users. The app adds more than 2 million users each week.

Shazam says that it has been responsible for over $300 million in digital good sales through affiliate partners such as iTunes and that it is doubling that total each year. Company CEO Rich Riley said that the apps increasing synchronization with TV content has opened up a new area for user and revenue growth. “We look forward to working with America Movil to launch these services in the region as we seek to increase our ubiquity throughout the world,” he said in a statement. The company says that it has already executed over 250 Shazam-enabled TV ad campaigns in 28 countries. It claims to recognize content running on any TV show across 160 channels in the U.S. in order to render related information. On the music front, the company says that it gets more than 10 million requests to ID music each day and over 9 billion to date.

America Movil is major provider of wireless services in Latin America where it claims more than 262 million subscribers.

Shazam is one of many companies trying to become a media companion brand that tags and enhances experiences across different media types. Shazam uses audio ID technologies to recognize songs and TV programming or advertising. Alternatives like Digimarc focus on both visual identification of physical objects and audio signals. Augmented reality apps like Blippar focus on print and physical objects. And of course, there are countless scan code apps that recognize QR codes as a platform for enhancing media.