121–130 of 332 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Sounds like the problem was your singing.
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.
A shame that uber and the whole gig economy is so shit, circumventing basic employment rights and both minimum and living wages. I mean I like the basic idea and I agree that the taxi business needed the disruption, but it's opened the gates to people working well below a living wage because there's nothing else. That is, there's plenty of people that are willing to work below minimum wage because it's the only thing…
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…
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.
What are you referring to here?
It doesn't recognize you singing because it doesn't have the same spectral content as the full song. Shaman doesn't really identify tunes, it identifies recordings. (And it is amazing to me that it works at all)
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 actually bought Shazam on android after repeated attempts at getting google to find music in the same way - they're laughably bad.
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.
A shame that uber and the whole gig economy is so shit, circumventing basic employment rights and both minimum and living wages. I mean I like the basic idea and I agree that the taxi business needed the disruption, but it's opened the gates to people working well below a living wage because there's nothing else. That is, there's plenty of people that are willing to work below minimum wage because it's the only thing…
This is the same "Walmart doesn't pay its workers and destroys local businesses argument". People work there, and people shop there. Walmart didn't make anyone do anything, and neither does Uber.
In a free market, people do what is valuable to them. How can you say those people aren't? If it's not a free market, then how is it the corporations fault? Don't hate the player, hate the government.
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.
Shazam was founded in 1999-2000 ish and was live by 2002, longer ago than many people realise. The fingerprinting method they used was a novel one, and they successfully deployed it in a couple of years, with a database of two million tracks, in a system that could be used by dialling a number from any phone. It's an extraordinary and rare example of taking a research method and getting it to work at scale in the face of real constraints, in the process producing something that most people would never have imagined could be done.
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 mean, given that Google still can't even get close, I'd be inclined to tell every last one of them they're full of it. I actually bought Shazam on android after repeated attempts at getting google to find music in the same way - they're laughably bad.
that said, i still prefer shazam because it's an actual app, whereas google's implementation is a button that sometimes appears in the google app, and sometimes doesn't, seemingly at random.