16 ms·

Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

614 points by Zaheer 8y ago

denzil_correa 8y ago
> The app will soon offer its experience ad-free for all users so everyone can enjoy the best of Shazam without interruption. Probably, one of the best results from this acquisition.
- MrEfficiency 8y ago
  So how will Apple be Apple? >Exclusive? >Start charging money? >Patents? Not to mean that people shouldn't make money, but acquisition means that there will be change.
- colordrops 8y ago
  You can bet they will kill integration with Spotify though. And maybe no more Android support. I'll take ads over that.
  - sp332 8y ago
    Apple Music has an Android app, so I don't think they're that cutthroat on the music side of things.
    - deleted 8y ago
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  - iamdave 8y ago
    This is immediately where my mind went, the spotify integration is without a doubt the best thing (IMO) about Shazam. Find a song, in two screen taps I can add it to a playlist and come back to it when I'm queuing up tunes for the drive home from work. I will be very disappointed if this comes to light, and the only integration we're left with is Apple Music. Probably not likely, but probably not improbable either.
    - the_duke 8y ago
      Why not likely? It's almost guaranteed.
      - iamdave 8y ago
        Well I did say "probably", as in there's a chance it doesn't happen. Even if it's very, very slim. Speaking in absolutes isn't really my style.
  - xoa 8y ago
    >You can bet they will kill integration with Spotify though. Will they? Don't forget, the information flow is 2-way here, users get something useful out of it but Shazam (and now Apple) also learns what stuff is trending. If anything I actually lean towards them keeping or even enhancing Spotify and other service integration, at least as long as those services are viable: it effectively creates a direct channel into competing services that tells Apple exactly what stuff people want out of them, which they could then use directly in making Apple Music more competitive in turn. Even if we take as granted that boosting Apple Music is a major concern to Apple, doesn't that at least maybe seem like an equally or more valuable way to do it? It doesn't make any users angry either or act as bad PR, they aren't taking anything away, and they get a massive information channel into every competitor and even real-world venues. >And maybe no more Android support. By the same token, if Apple wants to boost Apple Music in general then having information on music popularity and trends coming in from the population of Android users too also seems helpful.
    - aurnik 8y ago
      Being able to see trending songs regardless of the platform is definitely a benefit for Apple, but I would also say that another possibility is that Spotify itself cuts off the integration now that Shazam is owned by their competitor.
  - diminoten 8y ago
    Google Play Music has a Shazam feature that's just as good (though I haven't rigorously tested it, it's never failed me), so lack of Android support is no real loss.
    - aneutron 8y ago
      In your region. I don't even have Play Music in mine.
  - vlozko 8y ago
    Apple does make an Apple Music app for Android. That alone is a reason they'd want to keep it around on Android.
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dr_ 8y ago
This was essentially announced at the end of last year, and is now being closed. You can now search for songs on Apple Music by typing in the lyrics to the song.
- wild_preference 8y ago
  Doesn’t sound like a feature related to this though.
- joezydeco 8y ago
  How long ago did Siri integrate with Shazam? Seems like a year or two now.
  - MBCook 8y ago
    I think it was quite a bit further, but every time I’ve tried it the app seems to work better than asking Siri for some reason.
jaequery 8y ago
Is this the same Shazam that was a torrent service back in the Napster days?
- codq 8y ago
  Are you thinking of KaZaA? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa
- xadoc 8y ago
  I think you're confusing it with Kazaa.
- waterside81 8y ago
  Are you thinking of Kazaa?
  - bitwize 8y ago
    Really? I could have sworn Sinbad endorsed it back in the day...
    - jolesf 8y ago
      as a genie, i remember that
geoc 8y ago
Hopefully we don't lose the integration with Spotify, deezer, ...
josh2600 8y ago
It’s weird to think that I would find it strange if Apple acquired a company like Shazam and left the ads on, isnt it? In a day and age when all of their competitors are turning to ads to increase revenues, Apple is making great customer experiences ad-free. I think the idea that making Shazam ad-free “makes sense” is actually fascinating because if it were google or amazon buying Shazam, I would assume it would remain littered with ads.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  It's hardly "littered" though. I use Shazam a lot and always found the ads very unintrusive. It is good news that they're going completely ad-free however.
  - donarb 8y ago
    Not just ad-free, but free now as well. Shazam had a free tier and you could pay to get rid of ads.
- s3r3nity 8y ago
  Yeah it's on-brand with Apple's approach for privacy and the like. Plus, the end-game to me seems like tighter integration with Siri and the AI ecosystem they're building.
bluetidepro 8y ago
Shazam is the one app that has been around since about the birth of the iPhone that honestly still blows my mind in it's capabilities. The fact it can so quickly figure out any song in so many environments is incredible. Call me simple, but I use it almost daily, and it is accurate close to 98% of the time. I absolutely love Shazam's iOS app, and they have done a great job keeping up with UI/UX treads for it over the many years it has been around. Easily one of my favorite and most used apps. With all that said, PLEASEEEEEE don't ruin it, Apple. Specifically meaning I love it's integration with Spotify. I will be bummed if that goes away for an exclusive Apple Music integration.
- creaghpatr 8y ago
  Yeah, Shazam was the last Zero to One moment I had with Tech. A true, visceral in-the-moment 'wow' that no social media giant or app has come close to emulating. The user value to time investment ratio is off the charts for Shazam. I love music and what they have done for it, especially in the context of other music apps like Spotify et al. Second the Don't Ruin It Apple plea, but congrats to the creators on a well-deserved exit.
  - screye 8y ago
    Google Now natively supports song detection in surroundings. It is also pretty good at it, and Google will do it passively without ever needing to open it as an app. I used Shazam a long time ago, so dunno how it had changed, but it certainly isn't a novel idea.
    - zimmund 8y ago
      Google Now won't detect music for you outside the US (Shazam does)
      - on_and_off 8y ago
        soundhound will though :) I have not used it in a while, but I used to have both apps on my phone
jcutrell 8y ago
I have so badly wanted to be able to Shazam and automatically add something to a Spotify playlist via IFTTT or whatever. I wonder if that will be more or less possible now. Maybe with a Shortcut?
- bluetidepro 8y ago
  This functionality has been around for a bit actually, you may have missed it. You have to connect your Spotify in the Shazam app. And every time you Shazam something it auto adds it to a "My Shazam Tracks" playlist in Spotify. Been using that feature from them for about a year now! :)
  - TheArcane 8y ago
    Yes, been using this for quite a while now. You don't need IFTTT.
- bluetidepro 8y ago
  Here is an old cnet article from 2015 that explains how to do it: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/get-a-spotify-or-rdio-playlist-of-your-shazams/ https://www.cnet.com/how-to/get-a-spotify-or-rdio-playlist-o... - Probably just need to translate that flow to whatever the current Shazam UI is for settings.
- deleted 8y ago
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joelrunyon 8y ago
I like Shazam, but I love Soundhound. I've found it way more accurate and I also found their other audio tools through it. Such a cool company. Congrats to Shazam though!
- rezeroed 8y ago
  Agreed. Shazam has failed for me too often where Soundhound has returned the result, that the only reason I use Shazam anymore is out of curiosity after Soundhound, to see if it can also find the track.
  - colordrops 8y ago
    Just as another data point, I've had the opposite experience. SoundHound doesn't work most of the time for me. My tastes are eclectic though.
- shittyadmin 8y ago
  The part I love about Soundhound is that I can basically hum something to it and expect a good result within a few attempts. Shazam can't do anything like that.
- iamcasen 8y ago
  Yeah I love the soundhound app as well. My wife is a professional singer, so often times she can sing or whistle a song and soundhound will pick it right up.
joezydeco 8y ago
I wonder what this does to the Jamie Foxx gameshow. https://www.fox.com/beat-shazam/ https://www.fox.com/beat-shazam/
- swarnie_ 8y ago
  I imagine a couple hundred fruity lawyers are wording a cease and desist letter to perfection right now.
  - joezydeco 8y ago
    Why would they do that? The show was developed with Shazam's blessing and probably a hefty license fee. It's literally a 30-minute commercial for the app (including a play-along game you do with the app).
black_puppydog 8y ago
That's gonna make it so much easier for apple to offer an EU "upload filter as a service" for music in the future...
- tumetab1 8y ago
  Nice point, I was trying to guess what value could this have for apple.
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
Shazam is the closest thing we have to witchcraft. I'm sure plenty of HNers will chime in with "well acktually..." type comments about how they could write it in their basement in a weekend, but to do what it does, as quickly as it does, on the ridiculously enormous library of music that it does is really something special.
- bluetidepro 8y ago
  Agreed 100%. It's the one app that truly does feel magical to me. And it still impresses people I show who don't use it regularly when we are out somewhere and they ask the age old "what song is this?" Pull out my phone, click one button, and in less than 5 seconds it's there. Blows my mind every-time.
- jonwachob91 8y ago
  >> Shazam is the closest thing we have to witchcraft. I've never used Shazam, but I used a similar feature on my LG Chocolate back in the day. How is Shazam any different than what my LG Chocolate did (aside from the Spotify integration)?
  - lobo_tuerto 8y ago
    I don't understand why you do expect others to know about that when Shazam is ubiquitous and you haven't bothered to try it yet. See for yourself. Expecting people to know how is it different from an LG Chocolate is just absurd...
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Apparently Verizon's LG Chocolate came with a service called VCast Song ID, that did the same thing as Shazam: "On certain phones, users can record a 10-second clip of a song, have it automatically identified, and optionally buy a copy of it for playback on a phone or computer." (https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/name-that-tune-with-verizon-v-cast-song-id/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/name-that-tune-with-ver...) That said, Shazam is actually older, having started as a shortcode service in the UK way back in 2002.
WillKirkby 8y ago
How long until they pull the Android version?
- oddevan 8y ago
  Start the timer when Apple Music for Android stops getting updates.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    I don’t think Apple Music for Android was a play for Android users. It’s more of away not to be at a disadvantage when Apple is trying to sell a Family Plsn for Apple Music to a family of mixed Android/iOS users. Back in the day, people didn’t realize the competitive advantage it gave MS to have a version for Macs. They could sell into large enterprises that may only have 5-10% Macs with a cross platform offering. Their competitors couldn’t.
    - oddevan 8y ago
      You're absolutely right! And I hadn't thought about MS Office for Mac in that way before; thanks! My comment was more geared towards OP's "well, now they're going to cancel the Android version" when Apple literally just released a new version of Apple Music for Android with platform-specific features: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/19/apple-music-android-auto-support/ https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/19/apple-music-android-aut...
lochlainn 8y ago
Apple doesn't really need to mess with the tech behind Shazam too much, I've personally found it to be lightyears ahead of the competition. I switched to Soundhound for a few years back in 2010 when both were relatively new, but the difference is unbelievable now. Shazam can get popular songs in less than a second, it's like some sort of musical L1 cache.
scoot 8y ago
Makes sense, since Shazam already powers the Siri "what song is this?" capability that links to iTunes.
b_tterc_p 8y ago
To anyone curious how Shazam works, it looks for similarity in the spectrogram of the music. This is not too different from how we identify certain chemical compounds with mass spectrometry.
benatkin 8y ago
Apple's first Android app?
- rhodysurf 8y ago
  They have an Apple Music App for Android
- mbrd 8y ago
  Not quite: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple+Inc https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple+Inc.
  - sp332 8y ago
    This URL only works if you include the period at the end (which HN's URL detector does not).
    - mbrd 8y ago
      Too late to edit my original comment but this may work better: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple+Inc%2E https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple+Inc%2E
      - benatkin 8y ago
        Each of those three looks half-assed (or half-apped). I guess Shazam would be Apple's first serious Android app, except probably not. :P
- heartbreak 8y ago
  No that would be https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.movetoios https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.move... It's not their second Android app either.
mncolinlee 8y ago
How long until they kill off Android, like they did with TestFlight and Buddybuild?
matthewmacleod 8y ago
I would love to see something like the Pixel's Now Playing feature come to Apple devices. If you haven't seen this, it periodically, passively listens for background music and displays the currently-playing song on the lock screen, using a local database of IIRC 20,000 songs. There's a paper about it (https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/46522.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...) – but I'd have to guess it's patented and we won't see it soon.
- hughes 8y ago
  The always-on nature of this is the really killer aspect of it, especially when combined with the always-on OLED screen. If something is playing nearby I don't even have to touch my phone to know what it is - just a glance will tell me what's playing.
Reedx 8y ago
I remember feeling that way the first time I used Uber (in SF where getting a taxi was difficult and unreliable). A few taps on my phone and a car shows up to my exact location in 2 minutes?! And that's it? No calling dispatch and hoping they'd show up eventually (sometimes they didn't). No fumbling with cash or tip or anything. It was like magic.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  My first experience with Uber made me so annoyed I e-mailed them to demand they delete my account, although I eventually tried it again.
  - chrisfinazzo 8y ago
    Uber charges you for "wait time" after you request a car...which is insane. Not that Lyft is much better, but I've never seen that kind of nonsense with them.
    - bluecalm 8y ago
      How is it nonsense? Someone is using their time and fuel to get to your location. It's only natural you pay for it.
      - chrisfinazzo 8y ago
        It feels like they're double dipping. Unpopular as it might be, I'd guess people would be more than willing to pay extra so that they could shitcan this "feature".
        pavel_lishin 8y ago
        So you want to pay extra to not pay extra?
        chrisfinazzo 8y ago
werber 8y ago
I honestly thought this happened when Shazam was integrated into Siri
pavlov 8y ago
Hopefully they'll rewrite Shazam's Apple Watch app using the private first-party APIs so that it actually works rather than randomly crashing 50% of the time. The state of third-party apps on the Watch is awful. It usually takes 10 seconds for an app to start on a Series 2, and sometimes they just get stuck on that loading screen. If you manage to get an app running, the UI library has ridiculous bugs like accidentally enabled screen rotation where turning your wrist flips the content by 90°. (Unlike a phone, there's no reason at all for a watch to react to orientation changes.) I could sort of understand these deficiencies for a hurried 1.0 product, but it's been three years and it's still this bad. There's no API for watch faces either. I get the impression that Apple truly doesn't want third parties on the Watch at all.
- Razengan 8y ago
  If they "truly" didn't want third parties on the Watch "at all" they wouldn't have released the watchOS SDK or made it possible to write, build and publish watch apps on the App Store.
  - pavlov 8y ago
    This wouldn't be the first time that Apple releases an SDK, decides internally it's actually not something they want to support, and then just leaves it languishing in a semi-broken state because it would be too much trouble to cancel it outright.
Incerto 8y ago
A great app that PRE-DATES smart phones. I remember using Shazam when it was a dial in service (dial 2580 in the UK), hold your old brick mobile phone up and you would get a txt message a minute later with the song. Seemed like magic then and still does now.
- daburninatorrr 8y ago
  I was unaware that this was a thing. That's pretty cool, and it's always nice to see a company like that able to adapt and thrive with the advent of smartphones
- smpetrey 8y ago
  Holy shit I had no idea, that's nothing short of amazing.
- kabes 8y ago
  I remember coca-cola did a large marketing campaign in some parts of Europe with them somewhere before the first iPhone (or at least before smartphones were common).
chrisweekly 8y ago
Tangent: I recently discovered SoundHound which supports singing / humming / whistling as input for song ID. IME it's not as good as Shazam for capturing "real" (pre-recorded / radio) tunes though.
expathacker 8y ago
I'm hoping that this extra access to Apple's extensive music collection will make this usable for music other than what you would hear on MTV or the classic rock station. The potential of the application is great, but as somebody with limited interest in pop, I find myself lacking for a way to identify new music discoveries.
- zeroname 8y ago
  Shazam doesn't just work on pop music, I've used it successfully on some pretty obscure stuff. It has to have been published "properly" though, which in the day and age of self-publishing directly to the net doesn't work so well.
mrleiter 8y ago
I once read in an article (that I unfortunately can't find right now) that the the worth of Shazam lies in the fact that it can recognise, which songs are trending. The value chain is approximately like this: 1)New song is released 2)It starts being "shazamed" by various people - it's becoming trendy 3)Large stores that differntiate themselves by being trendy want to play trendy songs first 4)They pay Shazam to tell them which songs are trendy 5)The stores play them 6)Customers "shazam" those songs in the store 7)Customers view the store as trendy 8)Now four instances have profited: Shazam, the store, the musician and the customers (for having found a trendy song very early on)
- neka 8y ago
  The main bulk of their income is/was from affiliate income paid by Apple, hence the buy-out.
  - mrleiter 8y ago
    Very interesting, I didn't know that. Makes sense.
- teej 8y ago
  I always found this talk on the subject fascinating: Predicting a Billboard Music Hit with Shazam Data - Cait O'Riordan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcTPvxo8SXY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcTPvxo8SXY)
- drb91 8y ago
  I’m not sure what the middleman is, or which way the money flows, but there are also services that provide new music to retailers. The retailers get access to the current trendy ambiance, and the artists get exposure in an environment where people are consciously accessorizing. Half the time I use shazam it’s in a store (the other half being lyfts).
- philers 8y ago
  The UK CEO presented some of their different data capabilities at the agency where I used to work: they were encouraging advertisers to use this data to soundtrack ads. The different 'shazam'd songs were also connected to locations and user demographics so if you wanted a track that was going to be big in a specific community you could get a good guess.
vemv 8y ago
Although Shazam is a black box to us consumers, I'm pretty sure its recognition quality dropped drastically in the last 2 years.
- mcphage 8y ago
  > I'm pretty sure its recognition quality dropped drastically in the last 2 years What happened 2 years ago that you think affected its recognition quality?
  - aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
    Mumble rap became popular.
  - vemv 8y ago
    I guess they changed the algorithm or tweaked its parameters. One specific thing I recall is that more false negatives started popping up - which is bad over UX (vs. no matches at all). The change was (perceivedly) strong enough for me to stopping using Shazam.
moogly 8y ago
I've had way more luck with Soundhound, so I'm not very bothered by this news.
mandeepj 8y ago
Can you please update the title? Apple acquired Shazam a bit ago. Today, they have completed that acquisition process.
jbyers 8y ago
For those experiencing an acute sense of déjà vu, this deal was announced in December 2017 and closed today.
Raphmedia 8y ago
On Snapchat, you can hold the camera screen and it starts to "Shazam" what songs are playing. I wonder if Apple will allow them to keep this feature.
carlsborg 8y ago
$400 million, ~December 2017
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pome 8y ago
Mmm, Price? :-)
S_A_P 8y ago
Shazam is one of those apps that has truly changed my life. I still remember as a teenager times where I heard a song on the radio or a mix show and missed the name of it. I have purchased entire albums thinking they had a song I liked and have been WRONG. Now I can let my phone figure it out over a noisy background like a bar or restaurant and it still knows what song I am tagging. This app is one that truly feels like magic. Even almost a facade later.
- gammateam 8y ago
  Yes, Shazam has done a lot for genre, and diminishing the care for genre at all. Now for people that have spent way too much of their life defending or living a genre, what I mean is that it allows artists to be more creative and less pigeonholed, and it allows people to explore more of what they want. People want certain sounds, and want more of that sound. Shazam has been a key component of the discovery process.
EugeneOZ 8y ago
SoundHound is much better and I'm glad they didn't acquire it.
Eric_WVGG 8y ago
Apple Insider has a good bit on why this acquisition happened: they've been doing a lot of interesting stuff with Augmented Reality. https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/09/25/why-did-apple-spend-400m-to-acquire-shazam https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/09/25/why-did-apple-spe...
ChrisArchitect 8y ago
Google has this built right into the assistant now and detects music is playing well enough to suggest "What is this song?" as a query - and it has really really good accuracy in my experience, and I am impressed mostly by it being able to pick out the song in a somewhat noisy room (a bar for example) Who needs shazam? Apple's just looking for more AI chops. G's already all over it.
lpage 8y ago
Their original white paper [1] is one of my favorite math-meets-software reads. Readable, elegant, and real world. https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf
paxys 8y ago
For those wondering why a seemingly normal acquisition took a year to close, it's because the EU was investigating it as a potential anti-competitive move.
synaesthesisx 8y ago
Apple is likely intending to use Shazam's tech for contextually-aware computing (via Airpods etc)
godfatha 8y ago
I like to say Siri, shazam this and it works great. Wish there was a way to add it to Notes after it Shazams so I can remember it for later.
- code_duck 8y ago
  You can also just ask her what song is playing. You just have to make sure she isn’t confused by any music app you might have open, because he will name the active track in that first. I agree a drawback is there is no history. I take a screenshot of the results.
bogomipz 8y ago
Apple Music's recommendation and discovery is pretty abysmal. I guess this will fix that issue. I'm amazed at how bad it given they know the standard that has been set by their competitor Spotify. When Apple acquired Beast we heard about how Jimmy Iovine and Dre were going to bring their understanding and expertise to Apple's music service. This now seems to have been a lot of bluster though. Apple had such a head start with iTunes, missed the boat with streaming, spent a fortune on Beats and finally seemed to be getting serious about their streaming music offering. And the product has been somewhere between underwhelming and "just OK." It's interesting to see that Apple's solution is to just buy their way out of their discovery problem. For a company with unlimited resources and great design skills it's strange that Apple is not really good at building services.
seymour333 8y ago
I'm guessing this thing is going to run all the time and send Apple a continuous stream of what music is actually playing around people, so they can use the data to better market music. Having song identification built into your iDevice is a nice value add for the consumer though
nirelCALBO 8y ago
Wooohooo parent really ate a big cock there
umaar 8y ago
I really enjoyed working at Shazam. One of my favourite parts were the hackdays, got to learn a lot. Here's a write up of visualising music recognitions: https://medium.freecodecamp.org/data-visualisation-with-1-billion-shazam-music-recognitions-90728df3a8c9 https://medium.freecodecamp.org/data-visualisation-with-1-bi... I've been planning to do more write-ups from past hackdays, such as building a functional Shazam experience in client side JavaScript and other visualisations. For example one time, I repurposed a WebGL globe to plot music recognitions over it. I don't have access to the Shazam tag stream anymore, but you can get a feel for how this looked as I've applied near real-time Wikipedia edits on the globe instead: https://umaar.com/globe/ https://umaar.com/globe/
- abhishekjha 8y ago
  Wow. Is there any open-source equivalent for this. Would love to see the complexity of the job as it scales and the workarounds in actual code?
  - umaar 8y ago
    For the data maps which the Medium article displays, I used: https://github.com/ericfischer/datamaps https://github.com/ericfischer/datamaps initially. If there's interest, I can try to get my scripts onto GitHub. They: a) Include Node.js scripts for converting raw big data (the raw Shazam stream) into something usable for visualisations. b) Contain Node.js scripts & utilities for automating the creation of maps focussed on particular geographic locations. c) Contain client side JavaScript for displaying all the individual map tiles onto an interactive map & Google Maps API code to query for places of interest (like a club, shopping center) which may explain heavy usage of Shazam in a particular location. For the globe, which is unrelated to the datamaps, here's the original WebGL globe which someone did in 2011: https://github.com/cedricpinson/globetweeter https://github.com/cedricpinson/globetweeter The Wikipedia edits version of the globe I did: https://github.com/umaar/wiki-globe https://github.com/umaar/wiki-globe - happy to do a write up of this if people think it'll be useful.
    - drewmol 8y ago
dang 8y ago
This has been happening for a while: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15899065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15899065. We've updated the title to reflect that. This thread is a good one, though, so we won't bury it as a dupe.
bogomipz 8y ago
In case anyone is interested, this is a good read on how audio finger printing in services like Shazam, Soundhound et al work: http://willdrevo.com/fingerprinting-and-audio-recognition-with-python/ http://willdrevo.com/fingerprinting-and-audio-recognition-wi...
drakenot 8y ago
The journal article by the Shazam creators titled, "An Industrial-Strength Audio Search Algorithm"[0], was one of the first CS papers I ever read. It was very easy to follow and I remember even making a personal utility that implemented their algorithm. [0] https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf
josemando 8y ago
I first heard about Shazam when I worked in a project to integrate Shazam API to Hello Moto J2ME app back in 2007~2008. And it was amazing to see how they were able to move to the smartphone world so gracefully!
doh 8y ago
Sorry to hijack this post, but if anyone is interested in content recognition, we built one of the largest reverse search engines for video/audio [0] and are always looking for skilled engineers to do more. I think our scale makes things very interesting. We currently index over 20 hours of video every second and to date we've indexed over 11.5B videos. Feel free to reach out to me directly at r@pex.com. [0] https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2018/06/22/video-search-with-rasty-turek/ https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2018/06/22/video-search...
zlotnydiev 8y ago
Wow. Can't believe Apple now own Shaquille O'Neal.
imandride 8y ago
Am I the only one that feels Shazam is no longer relevant? I don't think I know anyone has iShazam or SoundHound installed anymore. I feel all our music is on our phones now, so we already know what it is.
- PorkBoneSoup 8y ago
  Really? I still find it highly relevant. As someone who goes to a lot of gigs, listens to a lot of DJs & always has some sort of set playing in the background while I work—I find it invaluable for tracks I can't identify and want to quickly note/share with friends.
jpster 8y ago
What was Shazam’s business model?
lazzlazzlazz 8y ago
Looks like I'll be uninstalling Shazam and using only Soundhound thanks to the likely-deprecated Spotify integration. The platforms will swallow our options until we have no recourse but to jump platforms. Unless they make that too difficult, too.
nojvek 8y ago
I believe Shazam is very much an acquisition for its patent and algorithm sauce. The technology behind it is relatively simple based on audio fingerprinting http://royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-java/ http://royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-java/ It was either Google Music, Spotify or Apple Music that would have acquired it. I’m a 100% sure this will end up as a deep integration with Siri and the existing Apple Music app. Apple has always done well with its acquisitions. Buy small companies that do one small thing and do it extremely well, and fuse that with the Apple ecosystem, quality and rigor. Congrats to the Shazam team for going with Apple. Google would have most definitely messed it up like they did with Songza. I will never forgive them for that.
Paianni 8y ago
Shazam was featured in one of the commercials for the iPhone 3G in 2008.

614 points by Zaheer 8y ago

> The app will soon offer its experience ad-free for all users so everyone can enjoy the best of Shazam without interruption. Probably, one of the best results from this acquisition.

MrEfficiency 8y ago
So how will Apple be Apple? >Exclusive? >Start charging money? >Patents? Not to mean that people shouldn't make money, but acquisition means that there will be change.
colordrops 8y ago
You can bet they will kill integration with Spotify though. And maybe no more Android support. I'll take ads over that.
- sp332 8y ago
  Apple Music has an Android app, so I don't think they're that cutthroat on the music side of things.
  - deleted 8y ago
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- iamdave 8y ago
  This is immediately where my mind went, the spotify integration is without a doubt the best thing (IMO) about Shazam. Find a song, in two screen taps I can add it to a playlist and come back to it when I'm queuing up tunes for the drive home from work. I will be very disappointed if this comes to light, and the only integration we're left with is Apple Music. Probably not likely, but probably not improbable either.
  - the_duke 8y ago
    Why not likely? It's almost guaranteed.
    - iamdave 8y ago
      Well I did say "probably", as in there's a chance it doesn't happen. Even if it's very, very slim. Speaking in absolutes isn't really my style.
- xoa 8y ago
  >You can bet they will kill integration with Spotify though. Will they? Don't forget, the information flow is 2-way here, users get something useful out of it but Shazam (and now Apple) also learns what stuff is trending. If anything I actually lean towards them keeping or even enhancing Spotify and other service integration, at least as long as those services are viable: it effectively creates a direct channel into competing services that tells Apple exactly what stuff people want out of them, which they could then use directly in making Apple Music more competitive in turn. Even if we take as granted that boosting Apple Music is a major concern to Apple, doesn't that at least maybe seem like an equally or more valuable way to do it? It doesn't make any users angry either or act as bad PR, they aren't taking anything away, and they get a massive information channel into every competitor and even real-world venues. >And maybe no more Android support. By the same token, if Apple wants to boost Apple Music in general then having information on music popularity and trends coming in from the population of Android users too also seems helpful.
  - aurnik 8y ago
    Being able to see trending songs regardless of the platform is definitely a benefit for Apple, but I would also say that another possibility is that Spotify itself cuts off the integration now that Shazam is owned by their competitor.
- diminoten 8y ago
  Google Play Music has a Shazam feature that's just as good (though I haven't rigorously tested it, it's never failed me), so lack of Android support is no real loss.
  - aneutron 8y ago
    In your region. I don't even have Play Music in mine.
- vlozko 8y ago
  Apple does make an Apple Music app for Android. That alone is a reason they'd want to keep it around on Android.

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dr_ 8y ago

This was essentially announced at the end of last year, and is now being closed. You can now search for songs on Apple Music by typing in the lyrics to the song.

wild_preference 8y ago
Doesn’t sound like a feature related to this though.
joezydeco 8y ago
How long ago did Siri integrate with Shazam? Seems like a year or two now.
- MBCook 8y ago
  I think it was quite a bit further, but every time I’ve tried it the app seems to work better than asking Siri for some reason.

jaequery 8y ago

Is this the same Shazam that was a torrent service back in the Napster days?

codq 8y ago
Are you thinking of KaZaA? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa
xadoc 8y ago
I think you're confusing it with Kazaa.
waterside81 8y ago
Are you thinking of Kazaa?
- bitwize 8y ago
  Really? I could have sworn Sinbad endorsed it back in the day...
  - jolesf 8y ago
    as a genie, i remember that

geoc 8y ago

Hopefully we don't lose the integration with Spotify, deezer, ...

josh2600 8y ago

It’s weird to think that I would find it strange if Apple acquired a company like Shazam and left the ads on, isnt it? In a day and age when all of their competitors are turning to ads to increase revenues, Apple is making great customer experiences ad-free. I think the idea that making Shazam ad-free “makes sense” is actually fascinating because if it were google or amazon buying Shazam, I would assume it would remain littered with ads.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
It's hardly "littered" though. I use Shazam a lot and always found the ads very unintrusive. It is good news that they're going completely ad-free however.
- donarb 8y ago
  Not just ad-free, but free now as well. Shazam had a free tier and you could pay to get rid of ads.
s3r3nity 8y ago
Yeah it's on-brand with Apple's approach for privacy and the like. Plus, the end-game to me seems like tighter integration with Siri and the AI ecosystem they're building.

bluetidepro 8y ago

Shazam is the one app that has been around since about the birth of the iPhone that honestly still blows my mind in it's capabilities. The fact it can so quickly figure out any song in so many environments is incredible. Call me simple, but I use it almost daily, and it is accurate close to 98% of the time. I absolutely love Shazam's iOS app, and they have done a great job keeping up with UI/UX treads for it over the many years it has been around. Easily one of my favorite and most used apps. With all that said, PLEASEEEEEE don't ruin it, Apple. Specifically meaning I love it's integration with Spotify. I will be bummed if that goes away for an exclusive Apple Music integration.

creaghpatr 8y ago
Yeah, Shazam was the last Zero to One moment I had with Tech. A true, visceral in-the-moment 'wow' that no social media giant or app has come close to emulating. The user value to time investment ratio is off the charts for Shazam. I love music and what they have done for it, especially in the context of other music apps like Spotify et al. Second the Don't Ruin It Apple plea, but congrats to the creators on a well-deserved exit.
- screye 8y ago
  Google Now natively supports song detection in surroundings. It is also pretty good at it, and Google will do it passively without ever needing to open it as an app. I used Shazam a long time ago, so dunno how it had changed, but it certainly isn't a novel idea.
  - zimmund 8y ago
    Google Now won't detect music for you outside the US (Shazam does)
    - on_and_off 8y ago
      soundhound will though :) I have not used it in a while, but I used to have both apps on my phone

jcutrell 8y ago

I have so badly wanted to be able to Shazam and automatically add something to a Spotify playlist via IFTTT or whatever. I wonder if that will be more or less possible now. Maybe with a Shortcut?

bluetidepro 8y ago
This functionality has been around for a bit actually, you may have missed it. You have to connect your Spotify in the Shazam app. And every time you Shazam something it auto adds it to a "My Shazam Tracks" playlist in Spotify. Been using that feature from them for about a year now! :)
- TheArcane 8y ago
  Yes, been using this for quite a while now. You don't need IFTTT.
bluetidepro 8y ago
Here is an old cnet article from 2015 that explains how to do it: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/get-a-spotify-or-rdio-playlist-of-your-shazams/ https://www.cnet.com/how-to/get-a-spotify-or-rdio-playlist-o... - Probably just need to translate that flow to whatever the current Shazam UI is for settings.
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joelrunyon 8y ago

I like Shazam, but I love Soundhound. I've found it way more accurate and I also found their other audio tools through it. Such a cool company. Congrats to Shazam though!

rezeroed 8y ago
Agreed. Shazam has failed for me too often where Soundhound has returned the result, that the only reason I use Shazam anymore is out of curiosity after Soundhound, to see if it can also find the track.
- colordrops 8y ago
  Just as another data point, I've had the opposite experience. SoundHound doesn't work most of the time for me. My tastes are eclectic though.
shittyadmin 8y ago
The part I love about Soundhound is that I can basically hum something to it and expect a good result within a few attempts. Shazam can't do anything like that.
iamcasen 8y ago
Yeah I love the soundhound app as well. My wife is a professional singer, so often times she can sing or whistle a song and soundhound will pick it right up.

joezydeco 8y ago

I wonder what this does to the Jamie Foxx gameshow. https://www.fox.com/beat-shazam/ https://www.fox.com/beat-shazam/

swarnie_ 8y ago
I imagine a couple hundred fruity lawyers are wording a cease and desist letter to perfection right now.
- joezydeco 8y ago
  Why would they do that? The show was developed with Shazam's blessing and probably a hefty license fee. It's literally a 30-minute commercial for the app (including a play-along game you do with the app).

black_puppydog 8y ago

That's gonna make it so much easier for apple to offer an EU "upload filter as a service" for music in the future...

tumetab1 8y ago
Nice point, I was trying to guess what value could this have for apple.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago

Shazam is the closest thing we have to witchcraft. I'm sure plenty of HNers will chime in with "well acktually..." type comments about how they could write it in their basement in a weekend, but to do what it does, as quickly as it does, on the ridiculously enormous library of music that it does is really something special.

bluetidepro 8y ago
Agreed 100%. It's the one app that truly does feel magical to me. And it still impresses people I show who don't use it regularly when we are out somewhere and they ask the age old "what song is this?" Pull out my phone, click one button, and in less than 5 seconds it's there. Blows my mind every-time.
jonwachob91 8y ago
>> Shazam is the closest thing we have to witchcraft. I've never used Shazam, but I used a similar feature on my LG Chocolate back in the day. How is Shazam any different than what my LG Chocolate did (aside from the Spotify integration)?
- lobo_tuerto 8y ago
  I don't understand why you do expect others to know about that when Shazam is ubiquitous and you haven't bothered to try it yet. See for yourself. Expecting people to know how is it different from an LG Chocolate is just absurd...
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Apparently Verizon's LG Chocolate came with a service called VCast Song ID, that did the same thing as Shazam: "On certain phones, users can record a 10-second clip of a song, have it automatically identified, and optionally buy a copy of it for playback on a phone or computer." (https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/name-that-tune-with-verizon-v-cast-song-id/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/name-that-tune-with-ver...) That said, Shazam is actually older, having started as a shortcode service in the UK way back in 2002.

WillKirkby 8y ago

How long until they pull the Android version?

oddevan 8y ago
Start the timer when Apple Music for Android stops getting updates.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I don’t think Apple Music for Android was a play for Android users. It’s more of away not to be at a disadvantage when Apple is trying to sell a Family Plsn for Apple Music to a family of mixed Android/iOS users. Back in the day, people didn’t realize the competitive advantage it gave MS to have a version for Macs. They could sell into large enterprises that may only have 5-10% Macs with a cross platform offering. Their competitors couldn’t.
  - oddevan 8y ago
    You're absolutely right! And I hadn't thought about MS Office for Mac in that way before; thanks! My comment was more geared towards OP's "well, now they're going to cancel the Android version" when Apple literally just released a new version of Apple Music for Android with platform-specific features: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/19/apple-music-android-auto-support/ https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/19/apple-music-android-aut...

lochlainn 8y ago

Apple doesn't really need to mess with the tech behind Shazam too much, I've personally found it to be lightyears ahead of the competition. I switched to Soundhound for a few years back in 2010 when both were relatively new, but the difference is unbelievable now. Shazam can get popular songs in less than a second, it's like some sort of musical L1 cache.

scoot 8y ago

Makes sense, since Shazam already powers the Siri "what song is this?" capability that links to iTunes.

b_tterc_p 8y ago

To anyone curious how Shazam works, it looks for similarity in the spectrogram of the music. This is not too different from how we identify certain chemical compounds with mass spectrometry.

benatkin 8y ago

Apple's first Android app?

rhodysurf 8y ago
They have an Apple Music App for Android
mbrd 8y ago
Not quite: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple+Inc https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple+Inc.
- sp332 8y ago
  This URL only works if you include the period at the end (which HN's URL detector does not).
  - mbrd 8y ago
    Too late to edit my original comment but this may work better: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple+Inc%2E https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple+Inc%2E
    - benatkin 8y ago
      Each of those three looks half-assed (or half-apped). I guess Shazam would be Apple's first serious Android app, except probably not. :P
heartbreak 8y ago
No that would be https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.movetoios https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.move... It's not their second Android app either.

mncolinlee 8y ago

How long until they kill off Android, like they did with TestFlight and Buddybuild?

matthewmacleod 8y ago

I would love to see something like the Pixel's Now Playing feature come to Apple devices. If you haven't seen this, it periodically, passively listens for background music and displays the currently-playing song on the lock screen, using a local database of IIRC 20,000 songs. There's a paper about it (https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/46522.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...) – but I'd have to guess it's patented and we won't see it soon.

hughes 8y ago
The always-on nature of this is the really killer aspect of it, especially when combined with the always-on OLED screen. If something is playing nearby I don't even have to touch my phone to know what it is - just a glance will tell me what's playing.

Reedx 8y ago

I remember feeling that way the first time I used Uber (in SF where getting a taxi was difficult and unreliable). A few taps on my phone and a car shows up to my exact location in 2 minutes?! And that's it? No calling dispatch and hoping they'd show up eventually (sometimes they didn't). No fumbling with cash or tip or anything. It was like magic.

emodendroket 8y ago
My first experience with Uber made me so annoyed I e-mailed them to demand they delete my account, although I eventually tried it again.
- chrisfinazzo 8y ago
  Uber charges you for "wait time" after you request a car...which is insane. Not that Lyft is much better, but I've never seen that kind of nonsense with them.
  - bluecalm 8y ago
    How is it nonsense? Someone is using their time and fuel to get to your location. It's only natural you pay for it.
    - chrisfinazzo 8y ago
      It feels like they're double dipping. Unpopular as it might be, I'd guess people would be more than willing to pay extra so that they could shitcan this "feature".
      - pavel_lishin 8y ago
        So you want to pay extra to not pay extra?
        chrisfinazzo 8y ago

werber 8y ago

I honestly thought this happened when Shazam was integrated into Siri

pavlov 8y ago

Hopefully they'll rewrite Shazam's Apple Watch app using the private first-party APIs so that it actually works rather than randomly crashing 50% of the time. The state of third-party apps on the Watch is awful. It usually takes 10 seconds for an app to start on a Series 2, and sometimes they just get stuck on that loading screen. If you manage to get an app running, the UI library has ridiculous bugs like accidentally enabled screen rotation where turning your wrist flips the content by 90°. (Unlike a phone, there's no reason at all for a watch to react to orientation changes.) I could sort of understand these deficiencies for a hurried 1.0 product, but it's been three years and it's still this bad. There's no API for watch faces either. I get the impression that Apple truly doesn't want third parties on the Watch at all.

Razengan 8y ago
If they "truly" didn't want third parties on the Watch "at all" they wouldn't have released the watchOS SDK or made it possible to write, build and publish watch apps on the App Store.
- pavlov 8y ago
  This wouldn't be the first time that Apple releases an SDK, decides internally it's actually not something they want to support, and then just leaves it languishing in a semi-broken state because it would be too much trouble to cancel it outright.

Incerto 8y ago

A great app that PRE-DATES smart phones. I remember using Shazam when it was a dial in service (dial 2580 in the UK), hold your old brick mobile phone up and you would get a txt message a minute later with the song. Seemed like magic then and still does now.

daburninatorrr 8y ago
I was unaware that this was a thing. That's pretty cool, and it's always nice to see a company like that able to adapt and thrive with the advent of smartphones
smpetrey 8y ago
Holy shit I had no idea, that's nothing short of amazing.
kabes 8y ago
I remember coca-cola did a large marketing campaign in some parts of Europe with them somewhere before the first iPhone (or at least before smartphones were common).

chrisweekly 8y ago

Tangent: I recently discovered SoundHound which supports singing / humming / whistling as input for song ID. IME it's not as good as Shazam for capturing "real" (pre-recorded / radio) tunes though.

expathacker 8y ago

I'm hoping that this extra access to Apple's extensive music collection will make this usable for music other than what you would hear on MTV or the classic rock station. The potential of the application is great, but as somebody with limited interest in pop, I find myself lacking for a way to identify new music discoveries.

zeroname 8y ago
Shazam doesn't just work on pop music, I've used it successfully on some pretty obscure stuff. It has to have been published "properly" though, which in the day and age of self-publishing directly to the net doesn't work so well.

mrleiter 8y ago

I once read in an article (that I unfortunately can't find right now) that the the worth of Shazam lies in the fact that it can recognise, which songs are trending. The value chain is approximately like this: 1)New song is released 2)It starts being "shazamed" by various people - it's becoming trendy 3)Large stores that differntiate themselves by being trendy want to play trendy songs first 4)They pay Shazam to tell them which songs are trendy 5)The stores play them 6)Customers "shazam" those songs in the store 7)Customers view the store as trendy 8)Now four instances have profited: Shazam, the store, the musician and the customers (for having found a trendy song very early on)

neka 8y ago
The main bulk of their income is/was from affiliate income paid by Apple, hence the buy-out.
- mrleiter 8y ago
  Very interesting, I didn't know that. Makes sense.
teej 8y ago
I always found this talk on the subject fascinating: Predicting a Billboard Music Hit with Shazam Data - Cait O'Riordan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcTPvxo8SXY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcTPvxo8SXY)
drb91 8y ago
I’m not sure what the middleman is, or which way the money flows, but there are also services that provide new music to retailers. The retailers get access to the current trendy ambiance, and the artists get exposure in an environment where people are consciously accessorizing. Half the time I use shazam it’s in a store (the other half being lyfts).
philers 8y ago
The UK CEO presented some of their different data capabilities at the agency where I used to work: they were encouraging advertisers to use this data to soundtrack ads. The different 'shazam'd songs were also connected to locations and user demographics so if you wanted a track that was going to be big in a specific community you could get a good guess.

vemv 8y ago

Although Shazam is a black box to us consumers, I'm pretty sure its recognition quality dropped drastically in the last 2 years.

mcphage 8y ago
> I'm pretty sure its recognition quality dropped drastically in the last 2 years What happened 2 years ago that you think affected its recognition quality?
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
  Mumble rap became popular.
- vemv 8y ago
  I guess they changed the algorithm or tweaked its parameters. One specific thing I recall is that more false negatives started popping up - which is bad over UX (vs. no matches at all). The change was (perceivedly) strong enough for me to stopping using Shazam.

moogly 8y ago

I've had way more luck with Soundhound, so I'm not very bothered by this news.

mandeepj 8y ago

Can you please update the title? Apple acquired Shazam a bit ago. Today, they have completed that acquisition process.

jbyers 8y ago

For those experiencing an acute sense of déjà vu, this deal was announced in December 2017 and closed today.

Raphmedia 8y ago

On Snapchat, you can hold the camera screen and it starts to "Shazam" what songs are playing. I wonder if Apple will allow them to keep this feature.

carlsborg 8y ago

$400 million, ~December 2017

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pome 8y ago

Mmm, Price? :-)

S_A_P 8y ago

Shazam is one of those apps that has truly changed my life. I still remember as a teenager times where I heard a song on the radio or a mix show and missed the name of it. I have purchased entire albums thinking they had a song I liked and have been WRONG. Now I can let my phone figure it out over a noisy background like a bar or restaurant and it still knows what song I am tagging. This app is one that truly feels like magic. Even almost a facade later.

gammateam 8y ago
Yes, Shazam has done a lot for genre, and diminishing the care for genre at all. Now for people that have spent way too much of their life defending or living a genre, what I mean is that it allows artists to be more creative and less pigeonholed, and it allows people to explore more of what they want. People want certain sounds, and want more of that sound. Shazam has been a key component of the discovery process.

EugeneOZ 8y ago

SoundHound is much better and I'm glad they didn't acquire it.

Eric_WVGG 8y ago

Apple Insider has a good bit on why this acquisition happened: they've been doing a lot of interesting stuff with Augmented Reality. https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/09/25/why-did-apple-spend-400m-to-acquire-shazam https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/09/25/why-did-apple-spe...

ChrisArchitect 8y ago

Google has this built right into the assistant now and detects music is playing well enough to suggest "What is this song?" as a query - and it has really really good accuracy in my experience, and I am impressed mostly by it being able to pick out the song in a somewhat noisy room (a bar for example) Who needs shazam? Apple's just looking for more AI chops. G's already all over it.

lpage 8y ago

Their original white paper [1] is one of my favorite math-meets-software reads. Readable, elegant, and real world. https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf

paxys 8y ago

For those wondering why a seemingly normal acquisition took a year to close, it's because the EU was investigating it as a potential anti-competitive move.

synaesthesisx 8y ago

Apple is likely intending to use Shazam's tech for contextually-aware computing (via Airpods etc)

godfatha 8y ago

I like to say Siri, shazam this and it works great. Wish there was a way to add it to Notes after it Shazams so I can remember it for later.

code_duck 8y ago
You can also just ask her what song is playing. You just have to make sure she isn’t confused by any music app you might have open, because he will name the active track in that first. I agree a drawback is there is no history. I take a screenshot of the results.

bogomipz 8y ago

Apple Music's recommendation and discovery is pretty abysmal. I guess this will fix that issue. I'm amazed at how bad it given they know the standard that has been set by their competitor Spotify. When Apple acquired Beast we heard about how Jimmy Iovine and Dre were going to bring their understanding and expertise to Apple's music service. This now seems to have been a lot of bluster though. Apple had such a head start with iTunes, missed the boat with streaming, spent a fortune on Beats and finally seemed to be getting serious about their streaming music offering. And the product has been somewhere between underwhelming and "just OK." It's interesting to see that Apple's solution is to just buy their way out of their discovery problem. For a company with unlimited resources and great design skills it's strange that Apple is not really good at building services.

seymour333 8y ago

I'm guessing this thing is going to run all the time and send Apple a continuous stream of what music is actually playing around people, so they can use the data to better market music. Having song identification built into your iDevice is a nice value add for the consumer though

nirelCALBO 8y ago

Wooohooo parent really ate a big cock there

umaar 8y ago

I really enjoyed working at Shazam. One of my favourite parts were the hackdays, got to learn a lot. Here's a write up of visualising music recognitions: https://medium.freecodecamp.org/data-visualisation-with-1-billion-shazam-music-recognitions-90728df3a8c9 https://medium.freecodecamp.org/data-visualisation-with-1-bi... I've been planning to do more write-ups from past hackdays, such as building a functional Shazam experience in client side JavaScript and other visualisations. For example one time, I repurposed a WebGL globe to plot music recognitions over it. I don't have access to the Shazam tag stream anymore, but you can get a feel for how this looked as I've applied near real-time Wikipedia edits on the globe instead: https://umaar.com/globe/ https://umaar.com/globe/

abhishekjha 8y ago
Wow. Is there any open-source equivalent for this. Would love to see the complexity of the job as it scales and the workarounds in actual code?
- umaar 8y ago
  For the data maps which the Medium article displays, I used: https://github.com/ericfischer/datamaps https://github.com/ericfischer/datamaps initially. If there's interest, I can try to get my scripts onto GitHub. They: a) Include Node.js scripts for converting raw big data (the raw Shazam stream) into something usable for visualisations. b) Contain Node.js scripts & utilities for automating the creation of maps focussed on particular geographic locations. c) Contain client side JavaScript for displaying all the individual map tiles onto an interactive map & Google Maps API code to query for places of interest (like a club, shopping center) which may explain heavy usage of Shazam in a particular location. For the globe, which is unrelated to the datamaps, here's the original WebGL globe which someone did in 2011: https://github.com/cedricpinson/globetweeter https://github.com/cedricpinson/globetweeter The Wikipedia edits version of the globe I did: https://github.com/umaar/wiki-globe https://github.com/umaar/wiki-globe - happy to do a write up of this if people think it'll be useful.
  - drewmol 8y ago

dang 8y ago

This has been happening for a while: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15899065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15899065. We've updated the title to reflect that. This thread is a good one, though, so we won't bury it as a dupe.

bogomipz 8y ago

In case anyone is interested, this is a good read on how audio finger printing in services like Shazam, Soundhound et al work: http://willdrevo.com/fingerprinting-and-audio-recognition-with-python/ http://willdrevo.com/fingerprinting-and-audio-recognition-wi...

drakenot 8y ago

The journal article by the Shazam creators titled, "An Industrial-Strength Audio Search Algorithm"[0], was one of the first CS papers I ever read. It was very easy to follow and I remember even making a personal utility that implemented their algorithm. [0] https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf

josemando 8y ago

I first heard about Shazam when I worked in a project to integrate Shazam API to Hello Moto J2ME app back in 2007~2008. And it was amazing to see how they were able to move to the smartphone world so gracefully!

doh 8y ago

Sorry to hijack this post, but if anyone is interested in content recognition, we built one of the largest reverse search engines for video/audio [0] and are always looking for skilled engineers to do more. I think our scale makes things very interesting. We currently index over 20 hours of video every second and to date we've indexed over 11.5B videos. Feel free to reach out to me directly at r@pex.com. [0] https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2018/06/22/video-search-with-rasty-turek/ https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2018/06/22/video-search...

zlotnydiev 8y ago

Wow. Can't believe Apple now own Shaquille O'Neal.

imandride 8y ago

Am I the only one that feels Shazam is no longer relevant? I don't think I know anyone has iShazam or SoundHound installed anymore. I feel all our music is on our phones now, so we already know what it is.

PorkBoneSoup 8y ago
Really? I still find it highly relevant. As someone who goes to a lot of gigs, listens to a lot of DJs & always has some sort of set playing in the background while I work—I find it invaluable for tracks I can't identify and want to quickly note/share with friends.

jpster 8y ago

What was Shazam’s business model?

lazzlazzlazz 8y ago

Looks like I'll be uninstalling Shazam and using only Soundhound thanks to the likely-deprecated Spotify integration. The platforms will swallow our options until we have no recourse but to jump platforms. Unless they make that too difficult, too.

nojvek 8y ago

I believe Shazam is very much an acquisition for its patent and algorithm sauce. The technology behind it is relatively simple based on audio fingerprinting http://royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-java/ http://royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-java/ It was either Google Music, Spotify or Apple Music that would have acquired it. I’m a 100% sure this will end up as a deep integration with Siri and the existing Apple Music app. Apple has always done well with its acquisitions. Buy small companies that do one small thing and do it extremely well, and fuse that with the Apple ecosystem, quality and rigor. Congrats to the Shazam team for going with Apple. Google would have most definitely messed it up like they did with Songza. I will never forgive them for that.

Paianni 8y ago

Shazam was featured in one of the commercials for the iPhone 3G in 2008.