{"id":222809,"date":"2010-01-25T12:37:56","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T17:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"tag:contentnext.com,2010-01-24:article\/419-taps-revenge-profiting-from-pirates-shazam-booming-too"},"modified":"2010-01-25T12:37:56","modified_gmt":"2010-01-25T17:37:56","slug":"taps-revenge-profiting-from-pirates-shazam-booming-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/222809","title":{"rendered":"Tap’s Revenge: Profiting From Pirates; Shazam Booming, Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

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iPhone app piracy may have cost Apple (NSDQ: AAPL<\/a>) an estimated $450 million<\/a> (really?)<\/i> – but mobile pirates may also provide app developers with a rich new income stream<\/strong>, according to a fascinating insight from the stage at the Midem music conference in Cannes…<\/p>\n

Rhythm game Tap Tap Revenge saw 2.5 million downloads in its first two months – but a million<\/em> of those were pirate<\/em> downloads<\/strong>, Tapulous business development head Tim O’Brien told delegates.<\/p>\n

But that’s okay. “We know who they are<\/strong>,” O’Brien said, adding that many of the pirates are now buying virtual goods<\/strong> and legal music downloads within the app.\n<\/p>\n

“We’ve started running ads to the pirate users more aggressively<\/strong>.  Some of those users, because we sell virtual goods, have become high-volume users.” Now Tapulous has 25 million unique users and has been profitable<\/a> since June.<\/p>\n

Panelists – from music labels and the mobile app world – were united in their affection for in-app purchasing, which they said gives publishers more pricing flexibility than app stores’ billing engines allow.<\/p>\n

For one music app, it’s proving remarkably<\/em> successful. Shazam is now identifying two million songs every day and is converting 13 percent of them in to actual song purchases<\/strong>, CEO Andrew Fisher said. In other words, Shazam is sending a whopping 260,000 paying customers every day to affiliate partners like iTunes<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

“And it’s growing,” Fischer said. Already beyond 50 million users, it’s picking up another 750,000 new users every week. “When we launched Encore<\/a> (the new premium version), we haven’t seen one single instance of piracy, which has surprised us given how much we’ve shipped in to the marketplace.”<\/p>\n

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