Shazam For iOS Has Been Updated To Listen 'Longer' And 'Harder'

Shazam, listening

Going somewhere and a song is heard playing but curious about its title? Apple has this covered, thanks to its integration with Shazam.

Since Apple acquired the popular music recognition service in 2018, Apple also updated its iOS operating system to allow users to search for songs by letting their phones analyze the audio that is playing in the background, right through the Control Center on iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

"Use Shazam to find out what you're hearing on the radio, in a store, or anywhere else you hear a song. Then check your Shazam library to find songs you’ve identified, and discover new music based on what you’ve Shazamed," said Apple in a dedicated support page.

This time, the music recognition app has been updated to version 15.0.

What this version does, is making the app to spend more time listening to tougher-to-determine songs.

"Shazam now finds more songs by trying harder, for longer," said Shazam.

Shazam identifies songs by first having unique digital fingerprints of them.

No song is created the same: they have different lengths, beats, frequency and more. And together, they make songs unique. And Shazam works by analyzing songs, to then create audio fingerprint based on their spectrograms.

After that, Shazam stores the catalog of the fingerprints in its database, ready to be retrieved.

When users use Shazam, the app will analyze the captured sound and seeking a match from its database.

If it finds a match, it will send information of the song, such as its artist, title, and album back to the user.

That is how Shazam works in theory.

But in practice, there are chances that Shazam cannot listen too well, maybe due to noise or volume.

More than often, users had to reattempt the recognition, along with moving their phone closer to the speaker.

Sometimes, this work. But most of time, it doesn't.

Shazam, iOS

With the updated app, Shazam on iOS will attempt to recognize a song by listening to it more thoroughly.

By adding a few seconds before giving up should make a big difference.

This will make it able to properly recognize songs, and reduce mistakes.

Apple said that by working harder, Shazam will find more songs.

In June 2021, Apple announced that Shazam had surpassed one billion recognitions per month.

This makes it one of the most popular music apps in the world.

Published: 
26/11/2021