Shazam (service)

Shazam is a music identification service for mobile phones and smartphones of the company Shazam Entertainment Limited, headquartered in London.

In 2002, Shazam launched its services with a technology that makes it possible to identify music tracks using a mobile phones. Meanwhile, Shazam is used worldwide according to own data of 150 million users in over 150 countries. In the database there are more than 10 million entries, the number of database queries is specified with more than 4 million per day.

Services

Shazam 's oldest service, the query is a song by call a speed dial number, it is limited to the territory of the United Kingdom. The service analyzes the recorded sequence and looks for a matching entry in the database, based on an acoustic fingerprint. The result is reported to the user in the form of an SMS. Costs incurred for the call of the speed dial number and for any successful result. This service only limited to classical music or live performances.

Become known to a wider audience is Shazam but only by introducing an application for smartphones and tablets. Currently, the operating systems Apple iOS, BlackBerry OS, Android and Windows Phone, Windows 8 and Symbian support. When using the apps the user does not receive SMS, but he now needs a constant connection to the Internet (via cellular or Wi-Fi ), over which the detection is performed. However, there is also the possibility of offline to save the tone detection, and only then, to retrieve the piece of music over a wireless connection. The result appears on the screen with more information on the artist, album, title, genre, music label or a link to download or a matching video.

Criticism

In February 2014 IT professionals found that unsolicited Shazam sends private data from the Android device to advertising companies.