3 ms·
It's obviously a cracking algorithm, but what made Shazam doubly remarkable was how efficiently they turned it into a working product. It wasn't just a case of
by cannam 4y ago
It's obviously a cracking algorithm, but what made Shazam doubly remarkable was how efficiently they turned it into a working product.
It wasn't just a case of developing an algorithm that could in theory be used to match an audio signal against all the world's pop songs. They presumably also had to get hold of a substantial number of those songs, fingerprint them, and roll out the search robustly against generally very poor audio hardware using simple telephony services at (for the time) quite considerable scale. They did it very quickly, it worked super well from launch, and it's been running continuously ever since.
I've read the paper about the method, but I would love to know more about the original development and deployment.
- mkarliner 4y agoWell, I was CTO at the time, AMA...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ThrowawayTestr 4y agoHow'd y'all monetise back then?
- Nextgrid 4y agoI think it was a premium-rate number you had to call. When it became an app, it eventually had an ad-supported version with a paid, premium version "Shazam Encore" that was ad-free.
- jen729w 4y agoYep, 50p a go from memory. Charged to your phone bill. I used Shazam in London when it launched. I left the UK in 2003 so I reckon it was literally just as it launched. Presumably I saw billboards or a Wired article or something?
- schoen 4y agoHow did you get the underlying corpus of audio for all commercially recorded music?
- CobrastanJorji 4y agoI have the same question. Did you make deals with the major record labels? Did they ship you DVDs (or God forbid CDs) full of songs or something?
- jaredsohn 4y agoOr just collect mp3s? I'm guessing that at least happened while prototyping. And it seems like the most efficient way to make the service work in that era so it wouldn't surprise me if that data got used in production initially while handling licensing concerns separately.