Shazam (music app)

Shazam is a British application that can identify music based on a short sample played using the microphone on the device. It was created by the British company Shazam Entertainment Limited, based in London, and has been owned by Apple since 2018. The software is available for Android, macOS, iOS, Wear OS, watchOS and as a Google Chrome extension. The original UK developer of the app, Shazam Entertainment Limited, was founded in 1999 by Chris Barton, Philip Inghelbrecht, Avery Wang, and Dhiraj Mukherjee. On 24 September 2018, the company was acquired by Apple for a reported $400 million.

Overview

Shazam identifies songs using an audio fingerprint based on a time-frequency graph called a spectrogram. It uses a smartphone or computer's built-in microphone to gather a brief sample of the audio being played. Shazam stores a catalogue of audio fingerprints in a database. The user records a song for 10 seconds and the application creates an audio fingerprint. Shazam works by analyzing the captured sound and seeking a match based on an acoustic fingerprint in a database of millions of songs. If it finds a match, it sends information such as the artist, song title, and album back to the user. Some implementations of Shazam incorporate relevant links to services such as iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, or Groove Music. Shazam can identify music being played from any source, provided that the background noise level is not high enough to prevent an acoustic fingerprint from being taken, and that the song is present in the software's database. The company released a paid app called Shazam Encore, which was discontinued when the company was bought by Apple in 2018. In September 2012, the service was expanded to enable TV users in the US to identify featured music, access cast information, and get links to show information online, as well as added social networking capabilities. In 2014, Shazam redesigned its app and added features.

History

Shazam Entertainment Limited was founded in 1999 by Chris Barton and Philip Inghelbrecht, who were MBA students at the University of California, Berkeley, and Dhiraj Mukherjee, who worked at a London-based internet consulting firm called Viant. In need of a digital signal processing specialist, the founding team then hired Avery Wang, who had received his PhD from Stanford University.

2002–2006: Early days Initially, in 2002, the service was launched only in the UK and was known as "2580", as the number was the short code that customers dialled from their mobile phone to get music recognized. The phone would automatically hang up after 30 seconds. A result was then sent to the user in the form of a text message containing the song title and artist name. At a later date, the service also began to add hyperlinks in the text message to allow the user to download the song online. Shazam launched in the US on the AT&T Wireless network in 2004 in a joint offering with Musicphone, a now defunct San Francisco-based company. The service was free at launch with AT&T saying that it would charge $0.99 for each use in the future. In 2006, users were charged £0.60 per call or had unlimited use for £4.50 a month, as well as an online service to keep track of all tags.

2006–2017: Smartphone app and expansion Shazam first became available as an app in 2006 exclusively on the Amp'd Mobile cellular service. Shazam for iPhone debuted on 10 July 2008, with the launch of Apple's App Store. The free app enabled users to launch iTunes and buy the song directly, although the service struggled to identify classical music. Shazam launched on the Android platform on 30 October 2008, and on the Windows Mobile Marketplace a year later. Encore first appeared for the iPhone in November 2009. In December 2009, Shazam was downloaded ten million times in 150 countries across 350 mobile operators. Around eight percent of users purchased a track after it was identified by the service. Its success led to a funding round from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in October 2009. In January 2011, Apple announced that Shazam was the fourth most downloaded free app of all time on the App Store, while rival SoundHound had the top paid iPad app. In August 2012, Shazam announced the service had been used to tag five billion songs, TV shows and advertisements. In addition, Shazam claimed to have over 225 million users across 200 countries. A month later, the service claimed to have more than 250 million users with two million active users per week. In 2014, the app announced it had 100 million monthly active users and over 500 million downloads. In October 2014, Shazam announced its technology had been used to identify 15 billion songs. The Shazam app was listed among Techland's 50 Best Android Applications for 2013. In August 2014, Shazam announced there would be no more updates for Shazam(RED) after 7 August. Apple's launch of iOS 8 in September 2014 came with the integration of Shazam into Apple's virtual assistant Siri. In February 2013, Shazam announced a partnership with the music store Beatport, adding its library of electronic music to the service. On 3 April 2013 Shazam announced an exclusive partnership with Saavn, an Indian online music streaming service. The deal added nearly 1 million songs in Indian languages to Shazam's database. In July 2014, Shazam announced a partnership with Rdio that allows Shazam users to stream full songs within the app. In May 2015, Shazam was launched on Wear OS (formerly Android Wear).

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.