After seeing 15 million downloads of its song lyrics apps — available for iOS, Android, WP8, desktop Mac, W8 and Spotify — musiXmatch is making its first foray into the living room. For premium subscribers to its newly updated iOS 6 and 7 app, the company has added support for Apple’s AirPlay video mirroring feature, meaning that synchronised song lyrics can be beamed to an Apple TV, thus bringing the karaoke experience to the television. It’s a use-case that musiXmatch’s CEO and co-founder Max Ciociola has been talking up for quite some time.
Having built what it claims is the largest licensed lyrics database combined with audio matching technology, musiXmatch was already finding that its consumer-facing apps were being used to replicate a karaoke experience, so it made sense to bring that to a bigger screen — the television.
“We wanted to reinvent the karaoke experience which we think is pretty crappy” said Ciociola in a statement. “Now you don’t need any special hardware anymore to sing along and have fun with your friends and family. You just need an iPhone and musiXmatch”.
Er, and an Apple TV, I might add.
Bringing its app to the television via AirPlay and an Apple TV certainly represents low-hanging fruit in terms of testing the proposition. Since it’s only available for the paid-for ‘premium’ version of the iOS app, which is also sans advertising, it will be interesting to see if television mirroring is a feature that helps to increase conversion to its paid-for apps. That said, the company primarily makes money through selling advertising, along with licensing access to its API.
MusiXmatch is also sharing some updated metrics today. It says it’s adding 1 million “new users” (downloads) for its apps per month. Users in the U.S. now represent 20 percent of its total user base (it was 40 percent at the beginning of the year), while the UK and Germany are its biggest markets in Europe. In contrast, Asia represents 30% of musixmatch’s traffic. Meanwhile, the London, UK/Italy-based company says it’s still on track to open offices in New York, and Seul.
In January this year, the song lyrics database (or IMDB of song lyrics) announced a further $3.7 million in funding, bringing the total raised by the UK/Italian company to $8.1 million since it was founded in 2010. In what was effectively a follow-on round, the new capital came from existing investors Micheli Associati, and Paolo Barberis.