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How would you measure the success of Shazam?

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Interviewer: How would you measure the success of Shazam

Me: I am aware that Shazam is a music recognition app that helps identify a soundtrack. Although I am not a power user of this app. Could you please share a few details to help me understand their user workflow and business model?

Interviewer: Sure, Shazam is a music recognition app that listens to a short audio and helps identify the the sound track along with it’s origin. Users are then able to listen to the full soundtrack via different music providers such as spotify, Youtube or share it with their contacts, messengers etc. Shazam uses ads to generate revenue.

Goals:

The main goal for Shazam is for users to engage with the app to recognize music and it’s origin. Referral in a way where app users share the content they discover with their friends and family network.

The more time users spend using the app, the better ads monetization for Shazam hence engagement is important metric.

User Journey:

  1. User downloads the app from AppStore and signs up
  2. User hears a soundtrack they really like, they use Shazam to check if they can find more details
  3. Shazam provides details of the soundtrack with options to listen the full soundtrack, share it via other apps, messengers etc.

Metrics:

  1. Adoption/Acquisition: Based on the download and reviews, Shazam is popular app in the music recognition category on the AppStore. So it is cleary very well received by users
  2. Engagement/Retention: This is an important metric that shows how the end user engages with the app. How long have they been using this app, How often do they use the app to discover music, what do they do when they discover a new soundtrack, tracking these values Daily/weekly/monthly/YoY. Churn, what % of users haven’t logged in over a period.
  3. Monetization: Ads are the way Shazam generates revenue. it is important to understand how placement of these ads in the App drives the user engagement
To summarize,
Engagement and retention are imporant metrics to measure success of Shazam since there is direct impact of these two categories on the revenue generated by Shazam,
I will focus on following key metrics to determine Shazam’s success,
Primary:
  1. Number of sountrack recognized daily/weekly/monthly/YoY
  2. Avg time spent by users per session per day
Secondary:
Number of days user was active in past 30 day window.
Churn reduction