JOIN USApple's Shazam app reaches two major milestones
In 2002, Shazam started out as a SMS service '2580' in the UK, where-in users dial the shortcode to let the handset's microphone hear the music and after 30 seconds, it gets hanged up. After a few minutes, it would send the details such as song title and artist name to the customer.
The early concept was developed by Shazam Entertainment Limited-- founded by Chris Barton, Philip Inghelbrecht, Avery Wang, and Dhiraj Mukherjee in 1999. The Shazam app's algorithm uses an audio fingerprint technique based on a time-frequency graph called a spectrogram.
Soon enough, Shazam gained popularity not just in the UK, but also grew fast around the world. By the end of the decade, the iOS app version made its debut on Apple App Store in 2008, and in the following year, the Android version made its way to the Google Play Store. It even inspired a popular TV show 'Beat Shazam' in 2017 on Fox, wherein contestants have to quickly recognise a song before the app's algorithm could identify it.
Later Apple acquired the Shazam service and it continues to be the go-to app for music enthusiasts to identify exotic and old forgotten songs in a few seconds.
Recently, Apple-owned music app recorded one billion Shazams requests per month and also breached 50 billion tags since its inception in 2002.
The first-ever Shazam result — received via text message — was "Jeepster" by T. Rex.
Now, in its 19th year, the 50 billionth Shazamed song was recorded this week. It was Evangeline’s Mandopop song '框不住的愛 (不插電版)' meaning-- Unstoppable Love (Unplugged Version) in English.
As of now, Tones and I’s “Dance Monkey” is the most Shazamed track of all time.
"Shazam is synonymous with magic. Both for the fans getting song recognition almost instantly, and for the artists being discovered. With 1 billion recognitions a month, Shazam is one of the most popular music apps in the world. Today’s milestones show not only people’s love for Shazam but also the ever-growing appetite for music discovery around the world," said Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music and Beats.
Apple is making efforts to expand the utility of Shazam's unique and efficient algorithm to third-party apps.
In the recently concluded World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2021, Apple announced to release ShazamKit to developers to integrate it with their apps. They will also be able to get access to the massive catalog of songs. This will particularly come in handy for virtual music teaching apps.
Also, Shazam's audio fingerprinting tech works on-device and this will ensure no audio bytes needs to be streamed to any third-party cloud storage or server to get results back. This protects the user privacy of the device owners.
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