The music discovery app has picked Sofi Tukker, Lil Pump and BTS as part of its artists to watch in 2018.
Shazam, already a leading source for music discovery across the world, plans to take that one step further in 2018 with the announcement of its Next to Know platform.
The initiative, which begins in January, will present four artists each month that Shazam's staff believes could be among the next breakthrough acts in music, pulling from tagging data from its users as well as staff curation. Once an artist is chosen, they will not be featured again, meaning the program will have a roster of 48 by year's end.
“A Shazam is a strong signal that a music fan loves a song and is proactively looking for more information,” Julian Marshall, global head of content, Shazam, says. “In previous years, our data has helped highlight household names way ahead of them breaking into the mainstream. However, we’ve seen a change in how quickly an artist can break and we want to reflect that, too. That’s why, every month, we will update ‘Next to Know’ with four artists who are about to break out.”