How does Shazam work?!

rich_g85

rich_g85

rich_g85

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As title really... just saw an advert on TV for Shazam and it got me wondering how the thing works- anyone know?
 
Quoted from the first line of text when i googled it:

"hold out your phone to the music. The call will hang up automatically after 20 seconds and Shazam will send you a text ('tag') ..."

Basically Shazam will tell you the name of the song if you do not know it, all you do is hold your phone out to the song playing, and they will text you back what the song is.

EDIT: Mis-read the title, but anyways thats what it does, sorry :)
 
rich_g85 said:
As title really... just saw an advert on TV for Shazam and it got me wondering how the thing works- anyone know?
Click to expand...

Shazam's service is built around a patented proprietary pattern recognition technology that can identify recorded audio even under noisy conditions.
 
Freeman said:
Quoted from the first line of text when i googled it:

"hold out your phone to the music. The call will hang up automatically after 20 seconds and Shazam will send you a text ('tag') ..."

Basically Shazam will tell you the name of the song if you do not know it, all you do is hold your phone out to the song playing, and they will text you back what the song is.
Click to expand...
Sorry, I didn't make myself clear.

I know how to 'operate' Shazam, I meant how does it work out the name of your song- given 20 seconds of tune to go on. :)
 
rich_g85 said:
Sorry, I didn't make myself clear.

I know how to 'operate' Shazam, I meant how does it work out the name of your song- given 20 seconds of tune to go on. :)
Click to expand...
Its recognition system was developed by the company. Don't reckon they'll release too much information about how :)
 
Gilly said:
Its recognition system was developed by the company. Don't reckon they'll release too much information about how :)
Click to expand...
Fair do's. I'm quite sad and find things like this interesting :)
 
"How does it work?

A bit of mystery always seems to make things even more appealing...

But for the technology fans, here's a the science bit:

Back in 2001 our Chief Scientific Officer, Avery Wang, created an algorithm which is capable of recognising patterns in music that are unique to every song. So, when you call Shazam, we map the 20-second clip that you play to your phone to over 3.5 million songs in our database to find an exact match using the algorithm.

Simple."

http://www.shazam.com/music/portal/...e/default/template/what_is_tagging/music.html
 
Probably uses a neural network patern recognition system. very easy to create kinda tricky to train, but highly reliable, as long as you leave it in a state of constant training.
 
I've been intrigued by this in the past as well. My current phone (Sony Ericsson W850i) has software called 'Track ID'. Basically it's the same as Shazam except you record the ~10 sec clip with your phone and it uploads to a server (seems to be called 'gracenote') and it displays the artist, album and track. All very cool, works too :).
 
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