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I use Shazam constantly. One of the most useful apps on my phone. I'm always surprised how well it picks up songs even with some background noise and quiet volume. Had no idea it was owned by Apple.
 
I remember a friend with one of the first iPhones showing me this — well before I even got my first iPhone — and I thought the app was the coolest thing ever. Pretty sure that app alone convinced me to get an iPhone!
I was astounded the first time I saw it in action.
 
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I love Shazam. It's especially great for identifying music that's playing in TV and movie soundtracks. But I must be old or out of touch, because I never "Shazam'd" any of the songs on that playlist.
 
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Now if only today’s committees of songwriters would write classy, catchy, and timeless pop/rock songs like what was the norm during the 2nd half of last century instead of the repetitive, rhythmic, and throwaway B.S. that passes as “hits” today, then that app would be so much more useful!
 
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In a club, dialling 2580 and holding my trusty Nokia 3310 up in the air. Ah, those were the days!
 
The most Shazammed songs of each year will be the WORST songs of each year. The most popular is always the worst.
Good lord that playlist has some of the worst songs of the past 2 decades.
I only recognized a couple of titles/artists, which I have zero shame. And, I would not say the song is the best of the associated artist. Lastly, yes, the most popular (or “radio hits” as they were called in my day) are typically/overall bad to meh. Essentially, radio hits were a catchy/easy introduction to a new album.
 
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Reading the comments I wonder if it is bad that I don't hate all the songs in the playlist. Admittedly I didn't know most of them (only 4 or 5), but at least half of them sound fine to me and I can see why they became popular.
 
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Reading the comments I wonder if it is bad that I don't hate all the songs in the playlist.
Ha!
at least half of them sound fine to me and I can see why they became popular.
Most popular songs are easy listening: they have far less rhythm variation, more repetition of the chorus, simpler chorus, and, more recently, lots of synthesizer and auto-tune. Do these qualities absolutely equate to bad? No. Although, for some of us, there’s greater appreciation for songs with higher complexities (lyrics and instrumentals) — which often require several repeats with attentive listening to fully take-in/understand.
 
I also had no idea Shazam existed before modern smartphones. Next I'll learn that my grandma was able to arrange playlists on her Victrola.
When I found out some of those old record player consoles could load up multiple LPs like a disc changer, I was blown away.
 
Shazam is simply one of the very few apps that I rate as “must have”.

Easy to use, fast and effective, integrated with Apple Music, available on AW as well…. Just wow!
 
Is using Shazam any different from just asking Siri, “What song is this?”?
 
My method for learning a song was to transcribe a portion of the lyrics into my flip phone and then search them online. Worked most of the time.

I didn’t know there was a phone service at that time.
 
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Is using Shazam any different from just asking Siri, “What song is this?”?
The Siri functionality is enabled by Shazam so you are using the same service. It’s just different in that it keeps a list in iTunes instead of within the Shazam app.

If I recall correctly, Siri music recognition and Shazam will be better integrated in iOS 16, as in a unified list of song lookup history.
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How does Shazam work as well as it does and yet Siri has trouble "calling my wife at home."?

("Sorry I don't have a number for your wife at home.")
("Sorry I don't know who your wife is.")
("Hmm Sorry, I'm having problems. Please try again in a few moments.")
the songs on the radio are recorded and have a unique digital signature that exist in a database. they just have to match it. your voice signature and transcoding the digital audio to queryable language is a different technology. there is no database of digital audio of every word you could say, let alone the rules of the language itself. it's pretty difficult
 
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Is using Shazam any different from just asking Siri, “What song is this?”?
Shazam works. 😉

the songs on the radio are recorded and have a unique digital signature that exist in a database. they just have to match it. your voice signature and transcoding the digital audio to queryable language is a different technology. there is no database of digital audio of every word you could say, let alone the rules of the language itself. it's pretty difficult
That was part joke and part not. I understand how Shazam works, still a little bit of black magic in there for it to work as fast as it does. However a voice assistant that's been around for 12 years should be able to handle things like "call my wife" a bit better than it does.
 
I remember this weird little usb stick / thing: you would click a button when you heard a song on the radio that you liked, the. Go home and plug the stick into a computer, tell it where you were, zip code/time etc and it would tell you the song that you listened to on the radio…then off to the CD store to buy it, etc.
 
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