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Continuous low-power music recognition

research.google.com

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Re: Continuous low-power music recognition

#51

Post by computerex »

sly010 wrote: post #47
awalton wrote: post #41

...this doesn't seem like it is at all worth giving up 1% of battery life. I don't think it's even worth giving away 0.25% of battery life to detect whatever the 70k songs stored in the database is, nor is it worth the space the database is taking up on the device. The question of "what song is this" comes up maybe once a month at best, and apps like Shazam already exist and have much deeper databases to search throu…

I would argue that it's not worth my 30 seconds to unlock my phone and open Shazam (which btw turns on the display and the radio, which then triggers other apps to poll for notifications, so there goes your 1%) I would also bet the database is probably not much bigger then the shazam app itself. I frankly just find it a well balanced solution both in terms of UX and in terms of engineering.

> I would also bet the database is probably not much bigger then the shazam app itself.

I don't know what you're trying to say here. Shazam has millions of songs in their database, according to the original paper the offline mobile recognition system by google just has something over 70k finger prints. That's the big benefit of using an online system, you don't have to have all the fingerprints stored locally and also don't have to stick to the low power constraint.

Re: Continuous low-power music recognition

#52

Post by rllin »

awalton wrote: post #41

...this doesn't seem like it is at all worth giving up 1% of battery life. I don't think it's even worth giving away 0.25% of battery life to detect whatever the 70k songs stored in the database is, nor is it worth the space the database is taking up on the device. The question of "what song is this" comes up maybe once a month at best, and apps like Shazam already exist and have much deeper databases to search throu…

> The question of "what song is this" comes up maybe once a month at best, and apps like Shazam already exist and have much deeper databases to search through.

very bold anecdata claim.

I would love to see Shazam numbers as to the actual median frequency per month.

I love this feature on my Pixel 2. I glance at my phone at least 2-3 a day just for this feature. To me it adds another layer of separation from being tied to me phone. Previously pulling up Shazam would bait me into engaging with notifications I didn't need to engage with.

I do agree with the privacy concerns though.

Re: Continuous low-power music recognition

#53

Post by stronglikedan »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #31
Ajedi32 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your actual privacy concern? If the whole process happens entirely on-device, then this reveals absolutely no information of any kind to anyone, correct?

> If the whole process happens entirely on-device Sure, if. Which I can verify, but I don't want to have to. I don't want to have to verify that a corporation isn't fucking me at every turn. And it's possible that vulnerability will be discovered that lets people stream the audio somewhere, or listen to key words and send just those portions. I don't know enough about Android to know whether it's more plausible for t…

> Sure, if. Which I can verify, but I don't want to have to.

The great thing is that you don't have to! There's plenty of other people that are happy to do so and report their findings. The app would be outed as fast as other software that has attempted to send personal data without disclosure (Windows telemetry, Samsung TVs, etc.). I doubt Echo could ever get away with sending everything to Amazon's servers. And if you don't trust that others would do that, then you just don't have to use it, or use alternatives like Shazam.

Re: Continuous low-power music recognition

#54

Post by jacksmith21006 »

awalton wrote: post #41

...this doesn't seem like it is at all worth giving up 1% of battery life. I don't think it's even worth giving away 0.25% of battery life to detect whatever the 70k songs stored in the database is, nor is it worth the space the database is taking up on the device. The question of "what song is this" comes up maybe once a month at best, and apps like Shazam already exist and have much deeper databases to search throu…

Have a Pixel 2 XL and like the feature and keep it on my lock screen. But I am horrible at remembering song names. I most like it with driving and the radio is not the type that displays the song name.

Re: Continuous low-power music recognition

#55

Post by jacksmith21006 »

keytarsolo wrote: post #25
xr4ti wrote: post #17

> Now Playing, has a daily battery usage of less than 1% on average, respects user privacy by running entirely on-device and can passively recognize a wide range of music. Maybe I am missing something, but this seems to be much less respectful of my privacy than an app that only listens to the ambient sound around me when I explicitly give my consent (by opening/activating the app).

This option has to be explicitly turned on. It's off by default (at least it was on my German Pixel 2).

Can verify that in the US it was off by default and I had to turn it on. It is a feature I like and use pretty often.

Re: Continuous low-power music recognition

#57

Post by e12e »

I wonder how well this performs. I see I have roughly 2000 songs on mys sd card. I find it a little hard to believe that 40x that is enough to cover a big enough slice to be able to actually answer the question of "what's this" when it comes up?

[ed: i actually think I'd have plenty of room for 70k songs in high quality ogg vorbis vbr or equivalent - that'd frankly be more interesting... ]

Re: Continuous low-power music recognition

#58

Post by kosmet »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #40
kosmet wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything sensed can be transmitted but not necessarily in its current form. It can be used to train some ml algorithm about you and the parameters can be transferred. Privacy should start at the sensing level.

So you're saying you'd prefer that your phone not have a microphone? Because that's where this information is ultimately coming from. (At the "sensing level".)

Maybe we need physical switches for the microphone and the camera.
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