Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#201

Post by castlecrasher2 » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:22 PM UTC

sincerely wrote: post #193

olalonde wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why minimum wage and other laws exist. This is not a settled question in economics. The idea that minimum wage laws help the poor is at the very least debatable.

I would be interested in a counterargument because I am having trouble coming up with one myself.

My opinion is that having a minimum wage influences people to not make their own target, since an authority figure essentially deemed one hour of work is worth X dollars. Removing the minimum wage would make workers think for themselves how much they should earn and I believe that inclusion in their earning process would lead them to plan better, work better, and therefore earn more.

Essentially, I believe that when the government thinks for the people like declaring a minimum wage the people tend to avoid thinking about it themselves.

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#202

Post by h1srf » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:24 PM UTC

Timmah wrote: post #38

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.

It creates a time series of frequencies then checks a db for that same series. A problem that is easily parallelizable. Probably does some filtering first. It's a very useful and clever application, but not that technically challenging. The most amazing feat is they got access to the catalogs of the record labels. I wish someone would do the same thing for commercials on TV. Auto detect the commercial and advance the…

> I wish someone would do the same thing for commercials on TV. Auto detect the commercial and advance the DVR by its exact duration

They've had it for years now. I was skipping commercials on my HTPC back in 2007-ish. I think the older Tivo's also had this ability.

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#203

Post by nandshab » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:26 PM UTC

kryogen1c wrote: post #127

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't understand this logic generally and in this case it makes even less sense. 10 years ago, Uber literally didn't exist. How, in any way, is Uber forcefully underpaying it's employees/contractors? People flocked to drive for Uber; where is the oppression here? 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 a…

[flagged]

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#204

Post by bsder » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:26 PM UTC

Cyph0n wrote: post #115

alfredmuffin wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I know these sort of situations are rare for the average HN user. A generalization if I ever saw one.

Foghorn Leghorn has some comments for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTwnwbG9YLE

And the original Senator Claghorn that Foghorn Leghorn was channeling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBE92naflJ0

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#205

Post by mrleiter » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:27 PM UTC

neka wrote: post #136

mrleiter wrote: post #103

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…

The main bulk of their income is/was from affiliate income paid by Apple, hence the buy-out.

Very interesting, I didn't know that. Makes sense.

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#206

Post by teej » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:27 PM UTC

mrleiter wrote: post #103

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…

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)

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#207

Post by matthewmacleod » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:29 PM UTC

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.

To stress the point, this feature uses a local database, doesn't send any data off of the device, and is turned off by default.

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#208

Post by twblalock » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:33 PM UTC

nielsbot wrote: post #183

kryogen1c wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's assuming there's an infinite supply of jobs. Not only did I not assume that, the exact opposite is true. Uber _just_ created all of their jobs; they didn't used to exist. Everyone started working there because they wanted to. It's valuable to them to spend their time driving. It's not like Uber forced closed other companies at a 1:1 ratio and force hired their workers for less. These are all voluntary transa…

If you're desperate you will "volunteer" to do certain things you don't want to do. That can be exploited. Depends if it's a sellers' or buyers' market.

Would Uber drivers be better off today if Uber had never existed?

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#209

Post by pfarrell » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:33 PM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #107

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.

Ooook I don't want to be that guy, but if you take a signal processing course in a university, you'd see that algorithms that Shazam probably uses aren't blackmagic. In UC Berkeley one of the projects we did in our Linear Algebra class was doing something like Shazam; the input was a 5 seconds of a random song tuned down so much that human hear can barely hear and white noise added. Then the problem is matching this…

I worked in email marketing where at its core, we were just doing string replacement from database lookups. Now, we did those string replacements over 300 million times a day. As my boss said "Everything at scale is hard".

Re: Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

#210

Post by dang » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:43 PM UTC

vernie wrote: post #111

gnulinux wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooook I don't want to be that guy, but if you take a signal processing course in a university, you'd see that algorithms that Shazam probably uses aren't blackmagic. In UC Berkeley one of the projects we did in our Linear Algebra class was doing something like Shazam; the input was a 5 seconds of a random song tuned down so much that human hear can barely hear and white noise added. Then the problem is matching this…

Pedant baited.

Please don't be a jerk on HN, even if another comment seems a bit pedantic.

Separately: there was nothing wrong with gnulinux's comment. It was obviously posted for the pleasure of sharing information, and didn't put down either the GP or Shazam.