How does "Shazam" do its thing? (iPhone)

Hi,

I recently downloaded this to my iPhone, and am completely blown away - Let it listen to a song for a few seconds and it identifies it!

How'd they do that?......

 

Not sure, but my Verizon LG Voyager has done this long before the iPhone.

 

True this option has been there for a while. We had it as #DJ here in Montreal under carrier Fido a couple of years ago. It probably just matches the recording with its database (iStore for iPhone).

 

No doubt. Although I suspect it's going to it's own DB rather than the iTunes store.

However, I'm amazed it can determine a "unique" signature (?) as quickly and accurately as it does.

Cheers,
Ian

 

From the Shazam site:

The ability to define an "exact fingerprint" from a few seconds of a track that is unique among 6 million tracks is, to me at least, very impressive!

Cheers,
Ian

 

Play a Beatles song and see what happens.

 

my G1 has the same trick...I know it won't work if you sing into it, so I assume they must have created some kind of electronic signature based on the notes and tone. if you notice, on some songs it lets you scroll over to see where it could be one of many songs that have similar chords.

 

Yup - I read a short blurb about that in Blender last week ago - then, yesterday, a co-efforter showed how his iphone with Shazam nailed it. In short, this thread was created shortly before I would have done the same.

Picture the following as Bookkeeping, by Certified Public Accountants;

In terms of efficiency, I'm guessing the Shazam algorithm somehow eliminates [says "No!" to] X number of tracks before even it reaches [the portion of] the servers where the actual tracks reside. This would require a specific sampling size, from anywhere within a song - "weighting it" in a sense - all the while "segregating" and eliminating that which does not apply.

What *Boggles* my mind is how, no matter what is known on servers with digital signatures for the qualifying tracks, Shazam can ignore White Noise or Ambient Sound which logically, should compromise findings greatly, yet still outputs correct [Yes!"] results, at speed.

 

Hey Thanks for mentioning this. I had this feature on a Sony phone I had, and was missing it on the iPhone.

M

 

Verizon has had a free app out for at least a year and a half that does the same thing.

 

EXACTLY! Its fast and almost scary good - I demo'd it the other day in a moving car and we even "spoke" over it's "recording" phase for a moment - It still nailed it on the first attempt. I want to know how it does it!.....

My one regret is that I put "iPhone" in the subject line

cheers,
Ian

 

Found it!

He's not telling everything, for obvious reasons, but the following is a (pretty heavy) technical description of what they're doing - Enjoy!

Cheers,
Ian

http://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf

 

Where do I find it for Verizon?