
Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam - Zaheer
https://nr.apple.com/dE4i2T4q4O
======
umaar
I really enjoyed working at Shazam. One of my favourite parts were the
hackdays, got to learn a lot. Here's a write up of visualising music
recognitions: [https://medium.freecodecamp.org/data-visualisation-
with-1-bi...](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/data-visualisation-
with-1-billion-shazam-music-recognitions-90728df3a8c9)

I've been planning to do more write-ups from past hackdays, such as building a
functional Shazam experience in client side JavaScript and other
visualisations. For example one time, I repurposed a WebGL globe to plot music
recognitions over it. I don't have access to the Shazam tag stream anymore,
but you can get a feel for how this looked as I've applied near real-time
Wikipedia edits on the globe instead:
[https://umaar.com/globe/](https://umaar.com/globe/)

~~~
abhishekjha
Wow. Is there any open-source equivalent for this. Would love to see the
complexity of the job as it scales and the workarounds in actual code?

~~~
umaar
For the data maps which the Medium article displays, I used:
[https://github.com/ericfischer/datamaps](https://github.com/ericfischer/datamaps)
initially. If there's interest, I can try to get my scripts onto GitHub. They:

a) Include Node.js scripts for converting raw big data (the raw Shazam stream)
into something usable for visualisations.

b) Contain Node.js scripts & utilities for automating the creation of maps
focussed on particular geographic locations.

c) Contain client side JavaScript for displaying all the individual map tiles
onto an interactive map & Google Maps API code to query for places of interest
(like a club, shopping center) which may explain heavy usage of Shazam in a
particular location.

For the globe, which is unrelated to the datamaps, here's the original WebGL
globe which someone did in 2011:
[https://github.com/cedricpinson/globetweeter](https://github.com/cedricpinson/globetweeter)

The Wikipedia edits version of the globe I did:
[https://github.com/umaar/wiki-globe](https://github.com/umaar/wiki-globe) \-
happy to do a write up of this if people think it'll be useful.

~~~
drewmol
Thanks for posting this! I've always wanted to build an audible ad-blocker
that can mute/replace the audio and analyzing a background/silent feed to
restore volume. Unfortunately all product paths I can forsee will surely lead
to targeted replacement ads, played at higher volume

------
dang
This has been happening for a while:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15899065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15899065).
We've updated the title to reflect that.

This thread is a good one, though, so we won't bury it as a dupe.

------
bluetidepro
Shazam is the one app that has been around since about the birth of the iPhone
that honestly still blows my mind in it's capabilities. The fact it can so
quickly figure out any song in so many environments is incredible. Call me
simple, but I use it almost daily, and it is accurate close to 98% of the
time. I absolutely love Shazam's iOS app, and they have done a great job
keeping up with UI/UX treads for it over the many years it has been around.
Easily one of my favorite and most used apps.

With all that said, PLEASEEEEEE don't ruin it, Apple. Specifically meaning I
love it's integration with Spotify. I will be bummed if that goes away for an
exclusive Apple Music integration.

~~~
endorphone
I agree with the lauding of Shazam, but I am interested in your statement "I
use it almost daily" \-- what for? I've always viewed Shazam as a novelty and
have installed and uninstalled it a few random times, but as Jobs would say it
seems like a feature not a product.

~~~
alfredmuffin
I can't speak for who you're replying to, but I find myself using it at
restaurants, bars, and public locations where music is playing, as well as
friends' cars, and other social gatherings. I know these sort of situations
are rare for the average HN user.

~~~
coldtea
They're also rare for anyone over 30 to care about (if not the situations
themselves, what some random soundtrack to them is). Give it time...

~~~
alfredmuffin
Yup. I too completely lost interest in music when I hit 30

/s

~~~
coldtea
Yup, because it matters what some outliers do when it comes to statements
about the general population ("it's also rare")

/s

~~~
alfredmuffin
I think I misunderstood ... _what_ exactly is rare?

~~~
coldtea
People being as interested to follow new music after 30-40 as opposed in their
teens early 20s...

~~~
ZeikJT
Seems possible, do you have studies or statistical data showing this?

------
SmellyGeekBoy
Shazam is the closest thing we have to witchcraft. I'm sure plenty of HNers
will chime in with "well acktually..." type comments about how they could
write it in their basement in a weekend, but to do what it does, as quickly as
it does, on the ridiculously enormous library of music that it does is really
something special.

~~~
avip
Well acktually, in my admittedly limited experience, Shazam is not capable of
recognizing any music at all without the digitized metadata encoded with sound
files. I've tried multiple times to sing very popular songs to it. It never
recognized them. You could attribute it to my poor musical skills (and I'm
fine with that), but 100% of humans would recognize the songs in < 10s
timeframe.

~~~
alfredmuffin
Sounds like the problem was your singing.

~~~
pvinis
Pun intended?

------
mrleiter
I once read in an article (that I unfortunately can't find right now) that the
the worth of Shazam lies in the fact that it can recognise, which songs are
trending. The value chain is approximately like this:

1)New song is released

2)It starts being "shazamed" by various people - it's becoming trendy

3)Large stores that differntiate themselves by being trendy want to play
trendy songs first

4)They pay Shazam to tell them which songs are trendy

5)The stores play them

6)Customers "shazam" those songs in the store

7)Customers view the store as trendy

8)Now four instances have profited: Shazam, the store, the musician and the
customers (for having found a trendy song very early on)

~~~
neka
The main bulk of their income is/was from affiliate income paid by Apple,
hence the buy-out.

~~~
mrleiter
Very interesting, I didn't know that. Makes sense.

------
Incerto
A great app that PRE-DATES smart phones. I remember using Shazam when it was a
dial in service (dial 2580 in the UK), hold your old brick mobile phone up and
you would get a txt message a minute later with the song. Seemed like magic
then and still does now.

~~~
daburninatorrr
I was unaware that this was a thing. That's pretty cool, and it's always nice
to see a company like that able to adapt and thrive with the advent of
smartphones

------
denzil_correa
> The app will soon offer its experience ad-free for all users so everyone can
> enjoy the best of Shazam without interruption.

Probably, one of the best results from this acquisition.

~~~
colordrops
You can bet they will kill integration with Spotify though. And maybe no more
Android support. I'll take ads over that.

~~~
xoa
> _You can bet they will kill integration with Spotify though._

Will they? Don't forget, the information flow is 2-way here, users get
something useful out of it but Shazam (and now Apple) also learns what stuff
is trending. If anything I actually lean towards them keeping or even
enhancing Spotify and other service integration, at least as long as those
services are viable: it effectively creates a direct channel into competing
services that tells Apple exactly what stuff people want out of them, which
they could then use directly in making Apple Music more competitive in turn.

Even if we take as granted that boosting Apple Music is a major concern to
Apple, doesn't that at least maybe seem like an equally or more valuable way
to do it? It doesn't make any users angry either or act as bad PR, they aren't
taking anything away, and they get a massive information channel into every
competitor and even real-world venues.

> _And maybe no more Android support._

By the same token, if Apple wants to boost Apple Music in general then having
information on music popularity and trends coming in from the population of
Android users too also seems helpful.

~~~
aurnik
Being able to see trending songs regardless of the platform is definitely a
benefit for Apple, but I would also say that another possibility is that
Spotify itself cuts off the integration now that Shazam is owned by their
competitor.

------
pavlov
Hopefully they'll rewrite Shazam's Apple Watch app using the private first-
party APIs so that it actually works rather than randomly crashing 50% of the
time.

The state of third-party apps on the Watch is awful. It usually takes 10
seconds for an app to start on a Series 2, and sometimes they just get stuck
on that loading screen. If you manage to get an app running, the UI library
has ridiculous bugs like accidentally enabled screen rotation where turning
your wrist flips the content by 90°. (Unlike a phone, there's no reason at all
for a watch to react to orientation changes.)

I could sort of understand these deficiencies for a hurried 1.0 product, but
it's been three years and it's still this bad. There's no API for watch faces
either. I get the impression that Apple truly doesn't want third parties on
the Watch at all.

~~~
Razengan
If they "truly" didn't want third parties on the Watch "at all" they wouldn't
have released the watchOS SDK or made it possible to write, build and publish
watch apps on the App Store.

~~~
pavlov
This wouldn't be the first time that Apple releases an SDK, decides internally
it's actually not something they want to support, and then just leaves it
languishing in a semi-broken state because it would be too much trouble to
cancel it outright.

------
dr_
This was essentially announced at the end of last year, and is now being
closed. You can now search for songs on Apple Music by typing in the lyrics to
the song.

~~~
joezydeco
How long ago did Siri integrate with Shazam? Seems like a year or two now.

~~~
MBCook
I think it was quite a bit further, but every time I’ve tried it the app seems
to work better than asking Siri for some reason.

------
joelrunyon
I like Shazam, but I love Soundhound. I've found it way more accurate and I
also found their other audio tools through it. Such a cool company.

Congrats to Shazam though!

~~~
rezeroed
Agreed. Shazam has failed for me too often where Soundhound has returned the
result, that the only reason I use Shazam anymore is out of curiosity after
Soundhound, to see if it can also find the track.

~~~
colordrops
Just as another data point, I've had the opposite experience. SoundHound
doesn't work most of the time for me. My tastes are eclectic though.

------
josh2600
It’s weird to think that I would find it strange if Apple acquired a company
like Shazam and left the ads on, isnt it? In a day and age when all of their
competitors are turning to ads to increase revenues, Apple is making great
customer experiences ad-free.

I think the idea that making Shazam ad-free “makes sense” is actually
fascinating because if it were google or amazon buying Shazam, I would assume
it would remain littered with ads.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
It's hardly "littered" though. I use Shazam a lot and always found the ads
very unintrusive. It is good news that they're going completely ad-free
however.

~~~
donarb
Not just ad-free, but free now as well. Shazam had a free tier and you could
pay to get rid of ads.

------
lochlainn
Apple doesn't really need to mess with the tech behind Shazam too much, I've
personally found it to be lightyears ahead of the competition. I switched to
Soundhound for a few years back in 2010 when both were relatively new, but the
difference is unbelievable now. Shazam can get popular songs in less than a
second, it's like some sort of musical L1 cache.

------
drakenot
The journal article by the Shazam creators titled, "An Industrial-Strength
Audio Search Algorithm"[0], was one of the first CS papers I ever read. It was
very easy to follow and I remember even making a personal utility that
implemented their algorithm.

[0]
[https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf](https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf)

------
matthewmacleod
I would love to see something like the Pixel's _Now Playing_ feature come to
Apple devices. If you haven't seen this, it periodically, passively listens
for background music and displays the currently-playing song on the lock
screen, using a local database of IIRC 20,000 songs. There's a paper about it
([https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/46522.pdf))
– but I'd have to guess it's patented and we won't see it soon.

~~~
hughes
The always-on nature of this is the really killer aspect of it, especially
when combined with the always-on OLED screen. If something is playing nearby I
don't even have to _touch_ my phone to know what it is - just a glance will
tell me what's playing.

------
chrisweekly
Tangent: I recently discovered SoundHound which supports singing / humming /
whistling as input for song ID. IME it's not as good as Shazam for capturing
"real" (pre-recorded / radio) tunes though.

------
black_puppydog
That's gonna make it so much easier for apple to offer an EU "upload filter as
a service" for music in the future...

~~~
tumetab1
Nice point, I was trying to guess what value could this have for apple.

------
S_A_P
Shazam is one of those apps that has truly changed my life. I still remember
as a teenager times where I heard a song on the radio or a mix show and missed
the name of it. I have purchased entire albums thinking they had a song I
liked and have been WRONG. Now I can let my phone figure it out over a noisy
background like a bar or restaurant and it still knows what song I am tagging.
This app is one that truly feels like magic. Even almost a facade later.

~~~
gammateam
Yes, Shazam has done a lot for genre, and diminishing the care for genre at
all. Now for people that have spent way too much of their life defending or
living a genre, what I mean is that it allows artists to be more creative and
less pigeonholed, and it allows people to explore more of what they want.

People want certain sounds, and want more of that sound.

Shazam has been a key component of the discovery process.

------
geoc
Hopefully we don't lose the integration with Spotify, deezer, ...

------
doh
Sorry to hijack this post, but if anyone is interested in content recognition,
we built one of the largest reverse search engines for video/audio [0] and are
always looking for skilled engineers to do more.

I think our scale makes things very interesting. We currently index over 20
hours of video every second and to date we've indexed over 11.5B videos.

Feel free to reach out to me directly at r@pex.com.

[0] [https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2018/06/22/video-
search...](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2018/06/22/video-search-with-
rasty-turek/)

------
jbyers
For those experiencing an acute sense of déjà vu, this deal was announced in
December 2017 and closed today.

------
Eric_WVGG
Apple Insider has a good bit on why this acquisition happened: they've been
doing a lot of interesting stuff with Augmented Reality.
[https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/09/25/why-did-apple-
spe...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/09/25/why-did-apple-
spend-400m-to-acquire-shazam)

------
bogomipz
Apple Music's recommendation and discovery is pretty abysmal. I guess this
will fix that issue. I'm amazed at how bad it given they know the standard
that has been set by their competitor Spotify.

When Apple acquired Beast we heard about how Jimmy Iovine and Dre were going
to bring their understanding and expertise to Apple's music service. This now
seems to have been a lot of bluster though. Apple had such a head start with
iTunes, missed the boat with streaming, spent a fortune on Beats and finally
seemed to be getting serious about their streaming music offering. And the
product has been somewhere between underwhelming and "just OK."

It's interesting to see that Apple's solution is to just buy their way out of
their discovery problem. For a company with unlimited resources and great
design skills it's strange that Apple is not really good at building services.

------
WillKirkby
How long until they pull the Android version?

~~~
oddevan
Start the timer when Apple Music for Android stops getting updates.

~~~
scarface74
I don’t think Apple Music for Android was a play for Android users. It’s more
of away not to be at a disadvantage when Apple is trying to sell a Family Plsn
for Apple Music to a family of mixed Android/iOS users.

Back in the day, people didn’t realize the competitive advantage it gave MS to
have a version for Macs. They could sell into large enterprises that may only
have 5-10% Macs with a cross platform offering. Their competitors couldn’t.

~~~
oddevan
You're absolutely right! And I hadn't thought about MS Office for Mac in that
way before; thanks!

My comment was more geared towards OP's "well, now they're going to cancel the
Android version" when Apple literally just released a new version of Apple
Music for Android with platform-specific features:
[https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/19/apple-music-android-
aut...](https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/19/apple-music-android-auto-
support/)

------
nojvek
I believe Shazam is very much an acquisition for its patent and algorithm
sauce. The technology behind it is relatively simple based on audio
fingerprinting

[http://royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-
java/](http://royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-java/)

It was either Google Music, Spotify or Apple Music that would have acquired
it.

I’m a 100% sure this will end up as a deep integration with Siri and the
existing Apple Music app.

Apple has always done well with its acquisitions. Buy small companies that do
one small thing and do it extremely well, and fuse that with the Apple
ecosystem, quality and rigor.

Congrats to the Shazam team for going with Apple. Google would have most
definitely messed it up like they did with Songza. I will never forgive them
for that.

------
lpage
Their original white paper [1] is one of my favorite math-meets-software
reads. Readable, elegant, and real world.

[https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf](https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf)

------
paxys
For those wondering why a seemingly normal acquisition took a year to close,
it's because the EU was investigating it as a potential anti-competitive move.

------
Raphmedia
On Snapchat, you can hold the camera screen and it starts to "Shazam" what
songs are playing.

I wonder if Apple will allow them to keep this feature.

------
expathacker
I'm hoping that this extra access to Apple's extensive music collection will
make this usable for music other than what you would hear on MTV or the
classic rock station. The potential of the application is great, but as
somebody with limited interest in pop, I find myself lacking for a way to
identify new music discoveries.

~~~
zeroname
Shazam doesn't just work on pop music, I've used it successfully on some
pretty obscure stuff.

It has to have been published "properly" though, which in the day and age of
self-publishing directly to the net doesn't work so well.

------
bogomipz
In case anyone is interested, this is a good read on how audio finger printing
in services like Shazam, Soundhound et al work:

[http://willdrevo.com/fingerprinting-and-audio-recognition-
wi...](http://willdrevo.com/fingerprinting-and-audio-recognition-with-python/)

------
scoot
Makes sense, since Shazam already powers the Siri "what song is this?"
capability that links to iTunes.

------
synaesthesisx
Apple is likely intending to use Shazam's tech for contextually-aware
computing (via Airpods etc)

------
lazzlazzlazz
Looks like I'll be uninstalling Shazam and using only Soundhound thanks to the
likely-deprecated Spotify integration.

The platforms will swallow our options until we have no recourse but to jump
platforms.

Unless they make that too difficult, too.

------
imandride
Am I the only one that feels Shazam is no longer relevant? I don't think I
know anyone has iShazam or SoundHound installed anymore. I feel all our music
is on our phones now, so we already know what it is.

~~~
PorkBoneSoup
Really? I still find it highly relevant. As someone who goes to a lot of gigs,
listens to a lot of DJs & always has some sort of set playing in the
background while I work—I find it invaluable for tracks I can't identify and
want to quickly note/share with friends.

------
josemando
I first heard about Shazam when I worked in a project to integrate Shazam API
to Hello Moto J2ME app back in 2007~2008. And it was amazing to see how they
were able to move to the smartphone world so gracefully!

------
jcutrell
I have so badly wanted to be able to Shazam and automatically add something to
a Spotify playlist via IFTTT or whatever.

I wonder if that will be more or less possible now. Maybe with a Shortcut?

~~~
bluetidepro
This functionality has been around for a bit actually, you may have missed it.
You have to connect your Spotify in the Shazam app. And every time you Shazam
something it auto adds it to a "My Shazam Tracks" playlist in Spotify. Been
using that feature from them for about a year now! :)

~~~
TheArcane
Yes, been using this for quite a while now. You don't need IFTTT.

------
joezydeco
I wonder what this does to the Jamie Foxx gameshow.

[https://www.fox.com/beat-shazam/](https://www.fox.com/beat-shazam/)

~~~
swarnie_
I imagine a couple hundred fruity lawyers are wording a cease and desist
letter to perfection right now.

~~~
joezydeco
Why would they do that? The show was developed with Shazam's blessing and
probably a hefty license fee.

It's literally a 30-minute commercial for the app (including a play-along game
you do _with_ the app).

------
godfatha
I like to say Siri, shazam this and it works great. Wish there was a way to
add it to Notes after it Shazams so I can remember it for later.

~~~
code_duck
You can also just ask her what song is playing. You just have to make sure she
isn’t confused by any music app you might have open, because he will name the
active track in that first.

I agree a drawback is there is no history. I take a screenshot of the results.

------
vemv
Although Shazam is a black box to us consumers, I'm pretty sure its
recognition quality dropped drastically in the last 2 years.

~~~
mcphage
> I'm pretty sure its recognition quality dropped drastically in the last 2
> years

What happened 2 years ago that you think affected its recognition quality?

~~~
aaaaaaaaaab
Mumble rap became popular.

------
ChrisArchitect
Google has this built right into the assistant now and detects music is
playing well enough to suggest "What is this song?" as a query - and it has
really really good accuracy in my experience, and I am impressed mostly by it
being able to pick out the song in a somewhat noisy room (a bar for example)

Who needs shazam? Apple's just looking for more AI chops. G's already all over
it.

------
moogly
I've had way more luck with Soundhound, so I'm not very bothered by this news.

------
mncolinlee
How long until they kill off Android, like they did with TestFlight and
Buddybuild?

------
Paianni
Shazam was featured in one of the commercials for the iPhone 3G in 2008.

------
seymour333
I'm guessing this thing is going to run all the time and send Apple a
continuous stream of what music is actually playing around people, so they can
use the data to better market music.

Having song identification built into your iDevice is a nice value add for the
consumer though

------
EugeneOZ
SoundHound is much better and I'm glad they didn't acquire it.

------
werber
I honestly thought this happened when Shazam was integrated into Siri

------
b_tterc_p
To anyone curious how Shazam works, it looks for similarity in the spectrogram
of the music. This is not too different from how we identify certain chemical
compounds with mass spectrometry.

------
jpster
What was Shazam’s business model?

------
carlsborg
$400 million, ~December 2017

------
pome
Mmm, Price? :-)

------
Reedx
I remember feeling that way the first time I used Uber (in SF where getting a
taxi was difficult and unreliable).

A few taps on my phone and a car shows up to my exact location in 2 minutes?!
And that's it? No calling dispatch and hoping they'd show up eventually
(sometimes they didn't). No fumbling with cash or tip or anything.

It was like magic.

~~~
Cthulhu_
A shame that uber and the whole gig economy is so shit, circumventing basic
employment rights and both minimum and living wages. I mean I like the basic
idea and I agree that the taxi business needed the disruption, but it's opened
the gates to people working well below a living wage because there's nothing
else. That is, there's plenty of people that are willing to work below minimum
wage because it's the only thing they have left. And companies - including
Uber - are more than happy to offer that kind of work.

~~~
kryogen1c
I don't understand this logic generally and in this case it makes even less
sense. 10 years ago, Uber literally didn't exist. How, in any way, is Uber
forcefully underpaying it's employees/contractors? People flocked to drive for
Uber; where is the oppression here?

This is the same "Walmart doesn't pay its workers and destroys local
businesses argument". People work there, and people shop there. Walmart didn't
make anyone do anything, and neither does Uber.

In a free market, people do what is valuable to them. How can you say those
people aren't? If it's not a free market, then how is it the corporations
fault? Don't hate the player, hate the government.

~~~
afterburner
In a completely free market, corporations are free to distort economic and
labour policy so that poor unemployed people are desperate to get any job they
can, regardless of how poorly it pays.

This is why minimum wage and other laws exist.

See also: race to the bottom.

~~~
ascagnel_
To add to this: if workers are underpaid relative to the cost of living in
their area, they'll likely end up on some government assistance program.

Effectively, Walmart/Uber/etc get to double-dip -- they pay their employees
less than a living wage, and based on the US tax structure, don't have to pay
for the government assistance programs that their employees end up needing to
make ends meet.

~~~
eh78ssxv2f
> To add to this: if workers are underpaid relative to the cost of living in
> their area, they'll likely end up on some government assistance program.

But that was already the situation before Uber came to the market? For all we
know, driving Uber might have moved some of the people less dependent on the
government assistance programs.

------
zlotnydiev
Wow. Can't believe Apple now own Shaquille O'Neal.

------
benatkin
Apple's first Android app?

~~~
mbrd
Not quite:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple+Inc](https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple+Inc).

~~~
sp332
This URL only works if you include the period at the end (which HN's URL
detector does not).

~~~
mbrd
Too late to edit my original comment but this may work better:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple+Inc%2E](https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple+Inc%2E)

~~~
benatkin
Each of those three looks half-assed (or _half-apped_ ). I guess Shazam would
be Apple's first _serious_ Android app, except probably not. :P

------
mandeepj
Can you please update the title? Apple acquired Shazam a bit ago. Today, they
have completed that acquisition process.

------
jaequery
Is this the same Shazam that was a torrent service back in the Napster days?

~~~
waterside81
Are you thinking of Kazaa?

~~~
bitwize
Really? I could have sworn Sinbad endorsed it back in the day...

~~~
jolesf
as a genie, i remember that

