[HN Gopher] How does Shazam work? (2022)
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       How does Shazam work? (2022)
        
       Author : TaurenHunter
       Score  : 82 points
       Date   : 2023-12-05 14:44 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cameronmacleod.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cameronmacleod.com)
        
       | vkaku wrote:
       | Thank you for sharing.
       | 
       | This is a great post that captures what a spectrogram does, and a
       | must read for people who want to understand how audio
       | fingerprinting works.
       | 
       | There are similar approximate algorithms available for other
       | media as well, so anyone who wishes to understand real world
       | hashing should take their time to study this article.
        
         | innagadadavida wrote:
         | The normal spectrogram technique was already invented by
         | Phillips prior to Shazam. What Shazam did was to hash things
         | combinatorial to reduce false positives.
        
       | ruuda wrote:
       | There is also Chromaprint [1], which works slightly differently.
       | It's based on pitch change patterns instead of maxima in the
       | spectrum. Chromaprint is used by AcoustID, which is a large open
       | database that links audio fingerprints to MusicBrainz recordings.
       | I find it astonishing how much music is in there despite having
       | not nearly as much commercial backing as Shazam.
       | 
       | [1]: https://oxygene.sk/2011/01/how-does-chromaprint-work/
        
       | hoherd wrote:
       | If this interests you, then take a look at sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ!, a
       | music software project from 2006 that uses similar classifying
       | techniques.
       | 
       | https://youtu.be/eRlhKaxcKpA
        
       | mmaunder wrote:
       | This was the smart approach when Shazam launched in 2008. I would
       | have done exactly the same thing - gone straight to developing a
       | method to turn every song into a hash as computationally
       | efficiently as possible. If you launched this today the default
       | R&D approach would be to train a model which may turn out to be
       | far less efficient and more expensive to host. It feels like the
       | kind of thing a model might be good at, but given that there are
       | a finite number of songs, taking a hash-based approach is
       | probably way more performant.
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related. Others?
       | 
       |  _How Shazam Works (2003 Paper)_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33299853 - Oct 2022 (1
       | comment)
       | 
       |  _Creating Shazam in Java (2010)_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32530056 - Aug 2022 (36
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Shazam turns 20_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32520593 - Aug 2022 (227
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _How Shazam Works (2015)_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23806142 - July 2020 (7
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Designing an audio adblocker_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18855029 - Jan 2019 (186
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Show HN: A radio /podcast adblocker featuring ML and Shazam-
       | like fingerprinting_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18459058 - Nov 2018 (2
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Show HN: Shazam-like acoustic fingerprinting of continuous
       | audio streams_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15809291 -
       | Nov 2017 (76 comments)
       | 
       |  _How Shazam Works (2015)_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15350729 - Sept 2017 (13
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Tell HN: Shazam picks up song from my kitchen light_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11593305 - April 2016 (2
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _How Shazam works_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9870408 - July 2015 (48
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Patent infringement claim re: "Creating Shazam in Java"
       | blogpost (2010)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9594480 -
       | May 2015 (18 comments)
       | 
       |  _The Shazam Effect (2014)_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9593429 - May 2015 (37
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _The Shazam Effect_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8634357 - Nov 2014 (34
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Ask HN: Is there an audio search technology that finds exact
       | and similar audio?_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8420141 - Oct 2014 (3
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Source code example of the Shazam algorithm_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5724442 - May 2013 (16
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Creating Shazam in Java_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5723863 - May 2013 (43
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _An Industrial-Strength Audio Search Algorithm (Shazam)_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2621103 - June 2011 (4
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Shazam 's Search for Songs Creates New Music Jobs_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2215295 - Feb 2011 (1
       | comment)
       | 
       |  _How does the music-identifying app Shazam work its magic?_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2214992 - Feb 2011 (2
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Implementing Shazam with Java in a weekend_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1702975 - Sept 2010 (23
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Shazam: not magic after all_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=909263 - Oct 2009 (28
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _How does the music-identifying app Shazam work its magic?_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=893353 - Oct 2009 (16
       | comments)
        
       | hideo wrote:
       | Why are there so few Shazam alternatives? Does it have something
       | to do with licensing perhaps? The algorithm itself is fascinating
       | but I don't get why this space seems to have just one player -
       | i.e. Shazam
        
         | jdadj wrote:
         | SoundHound is a credible alternative.
        
           | klipt wrote:
           | SoundHound it's actually much more impressive because it can
           | recognize hummed or whistled songs too!
        
             | esafak wrote:
             | Google search in Android can do that too. Albeit not very
             | well.
        
               | 2c2c2c wrote:
               | pixel series since 6 has an option to passively listen
               | and document songs by default. probably the only feature
               | I miss moving to iphone
        
         | pxeger1 wrote:
         | It definitely has more than one player. Google Assistant has
         | had this ability for a while, for example. But Shazam has the
         | advantage of being built in to iOS, which might be why you
         | think it's the only player
        
         | tialaramex wrote:
         | Where's the value? My Android phone just does this locally,
         | obviously Shazam has more storage and so they're going to
         | handle more obscure stuff that way, but for example I just set
         | my "Power of Love" playlist running, and the Pixel's built in
         | "Now Playing" knows both the Frankie Goes To Hollywood track
         | and the Huey Lewis number from Back to the Future.
         | 
         | When a "phone" was a dumb device just barely capable of
         | implementing GSM and displaying a clock then this might be
         | worth something as a business, but given where the $0 baseline
         | is, I don't see enough margin to justify competition, I'm
         | surprised even Shazam still makes commercial sense.
        
       | madrox wrote:
       | Shazam is one of those rare products that hasn't stopped feeling
       | magical in two decades. They're really the thing technologists
       | aught to aspire to.
        
         | bobbylarrybobby wrote:
         | If anything it's gotten even more magical. I was blown away
         | when I tried to find the song someone was singing on America's
         | Got Talent and the result it returned was the singer on AGT
         | (they index tv shows!?).
        
       | jimmySixDOF wrote:
       | For what it's worth there is a phenomenal site that applies
       | algorithmic matching not to songs but to genera classification
       | and the branching sub generas that new song signatures introduce.
       | An amazing resource run as a solo sidehussle and looks like it is
       | at risk of getting clipped due to hosting issues or something.
       | There was Music DNA from Pandora and something similar on LastFM
       | back a long time ago but this site is like the visual connectome
       | of all human music produced through to 2023 and would be a loss
       | for the World Wide Web if it stops.....
       | 
       | Every Noise At Once https://everynoise.com
        
         | bobsmooth wrote:
         | Oh damn, looks the creator was part of Spotify's recent
         | layoffs. He was a genre researcher while he was there.
        
         | irrational wrote:
         | Okay, that is super impressive. Especially what it does when
         | you search for an artist.
        
       | seydor wrote:
       | Shazam isn't great, so many tracks it can't identify or comes up
       | with random electro-trance tracks. online services like a-ha are
       | better
        
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       (page generated 2023-12-05 23:00 UTC)