Shazam searches are just one of several new types of data guiding the pop-music business. Concert promoters study Spotify listens to route tours through towns with the most fans, and some artists look for patterns in Pandora streaming to figure out which songs to play at each stop on a tour. In fact, all of our searching, streaming, downloading, and sharing is being used to answer the question the music industry has been asking for a century: What do people want to hear next?
The whole piece is worth a read. Really amazing how Shazam is driving the record industry in so many ways and in a more profitable way, driving concert sales as well. Just know, everything you consume was presented to you not simply because the art is that good, but because metrics and data points brought that tune to you.