Shazam is an application that can identify music based on a short sample played using the microphone on the device. It was created by London-based Shazam Entertainment, and has been owned by Apple Inc. 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 September 24, 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 audio being played. Shazam stores a catalogue of audio fingerprints in a database. The user tags 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 being taken, and that the song is present in the software's database.
As well as the free app, the company has released a paid app called Shazam Encore. 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 their app and added additional features.
Compatible devices
Shazam runs on Android, Wear OS, iOS, watchOS, BlackBerry OS, and Windows Phone systems. Shazam is also available for MacOS, as a desktop application that, when enabled, runs in the background and automatically recognises any song played on or near the computer. Apple's launch of iOS 8 in September 2014 came with the integration of Shazam into Apple's Siri function.
History
Shazam Entertainment Limited was founded in 1999 by Chris Barton and Philip Inghelbrecht, who were students at University of California, Berkeley and worked at a London-based internet consulting firm called Viant. In need of a digital signal processing specialist, the founding team then hired Wang, who had received his PhD from Stanford University. It first made a profit in 2016, 17 years after launch.
2002–2006: Early days of the service
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 July 10, 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 October 30, 2008, and on the Windows Mobile Marketplace a year later. Encore first appeared for 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.