Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

nr.apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 332 posts

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#91

Post by hanoz »

watty wrote: post #52
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #21

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.

I don't mean to take away from Shazam (because I too was amazed when I first used it) but the Pixel phones have Shazam-like ability built in which uses minimal battery and without internet... and it's constantly running any time music plays. Not really "magic" how it works but still pretty amazing that I can pull the phone out of my pocket any time I hear a song I like and immediately see the band/title.

> without internet

For anyone else finding this as implausible as I was, apparently the Pixel has a local database of 17,300 tracks. Still pretty impressive though.

https://uk.pcmag.com/news/91606/googles-pixel-2-phones-recog...

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#92

Post by alfredmuffin »

endorphone wrote: post #72
bluetidepro wrote: post #8

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…

I agree with the lauding of Shazam, but I am interested in your statement "I use it almost daily" -- what for? I've always viewed Shazam as a novelty and have installed and uninstalled it a few random times, but as Jobs would say it seems like a feature not a product.

I can't speak for who you're replying to, but I find myself using it at restaurants, bars, and public locations where music is playing, as well as friends' cars, and other social gatherings. I know these sort of situations are rare for the average HN user.

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#93

Post by theDoug »

endorphone wrote: post #72
bluetidepro wrote: post #8

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…

I agree with the lauding of Shazam, but I am interested in your statement "I use it almost daily" -- what for? I've always viewed Shazam as a novelty and have installed and uninstalled it a few random times, but as Jobs would say it seems like a feature not a product.

This "feature not a product" belief only makes sense if you pretend that the product doesn't provide the answer sought by its primary user and as byproduct produces a truly real-time stream/map of what music-enjoying people are interested in finding out more about.

This data would be incredibly valuable to companies trying to market and sell music. Like labels, and now, Apple. Not to mention keeping that data now out of the hands of others.

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#94

Post by bradstewart »

gregknicholson wrote: post #82
watty wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to take away from Shazam (because I too was amazed when I first used it) but the Pixel phones have Shazam-like ability built in which uses minimal battery and without internet... and it's constantly running any time music plays. Not really "magic" how it works but still pretty amazing that I can pull the phone out of my pocket any time I hear a song I like and immediately see the band/title.

> Pixel phones have Shazam-like ability built in which uses minimal battery and without internet... and it's constantly running any time music plays. Is it on by default? Cos that sounds really creepy.

No, it's not.

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#95

Post by zeroname »

expathacker wrote: post #79

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.

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.

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#96

Post by Jyaif »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #70
Jyaif wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes shazam's algorithm is aktually pretty simple math, but there's nothing wrong with creating a busines sbased on simple tech! Like most companies in tech, it's the business part that is hard, not the technical part.

When Twitter came out I was like "well it's a glorified shoutbox, I can hack that in an afternoon". Actually it still is, any developer can create a Twitter clone in hours. However Twitter managed to have the network effect, and (eventually) solve the huge scaling challenge that a system that transfers billions (?) of messages worldwide every day.

Twitter is hard to scale, you have to make trade-offs all over the place.

AFAIK that's not the case of Shazam where a read-only database would be enough. Sure eventually you have to manage multiple versions of your app and be able to gradually update your DB, but that's still simple stuff compared to the problem of how to make money.

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#97

Post by ProAm »

gregknicholson wrote: post #82
watty wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to take away from Shazam (because I too was amazed when I first used it) but the Pixel phones have Shazam-like ability built in which uses minimal battery and without internet... and it's constantly running any time music plays. Not really "magic" how it works but still pretty amazing that I can pull the phone out of my pocket any time I hear a song I like and immediately see the band/title.

> Pixel phones have Shazam-like ability built in which uses minimal battery and without internet... and it's constantly running any time music plays. Is it on by default? Cos that sounds really creepy.

Shazam is also on by default [1] , so they are both creepy

[1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8q8ee3/shazam-kee...

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#98

Post by smoe »

avip wrote: post #32
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #21

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.

Well acktually, in my admittedly limited experience, Shazam is not capable of recognizing any music at all without the digitized metadata encoded with sound files. I've tried multiple times to sing very popular songs to it. It never recognized them. You could attribute it to my poor musical skills (and I'm fine with that), but 100% of humans would recognize the songs in < 10s timeframe.

As far as I know, the way Shazam uses fingerprints it is not supposed to recognize any song this way. Or even when a cover or a live version of a song is played.

I remember Adam Neely (A musician/jazz composer/youtuber) mentioning in a Q&A, that for songs they played live for a television broadcast, backing tracks were added underneath and it was mixed as close as possible to the originals, among other reasons for the purpose of them being better "shazamable".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH_5j3Wm9qM&t=11m38s

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#100

Post by 0xcafecafe »

bluetidepro wrote: post #8

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…

Second this. And not just for english music. I have lost track how many times I have pulled up shazam to identify a bollywood song or an Indian regional song which I recognize vaguely from my childhood. It has always recognized it.
Post reply on HN