How does Shazam work? Easily explained

With the Shazam smartphone app, you can recognize almost any song within a few seconds. We explain to you in this practical tip how exactly the music tool works.

Shazam: Music recognition made easy

• Shazam is available as an app for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8/10. If you let the application listen briefly to the music in your area, you will receive your result after a few seconds.
• When Shazam recognizes a song, you are not only given the title and artist. You also get a slightly longer sample of the song and links to other music services such as iTunes, Spotify, Deezer and Apple Music.
• Even under unfavorable conditions, Shazam is able to recognize the songs: Even with bad sound or strong background noise, the tool works very reliably. The app owes this to its special functionality:

Shazam: That's how music detection works

• Shazam has a large database that stores millions of songs. Each of the saved songs has an individual fingerprint. Part of the song is enough to identify the entire fingerprint.
• This individual identifier is composed of various characteristics. Since the entire procedure is very complex, we explain the procedure using a small example: If a high tone A follows a rather low tone B, this is already a characteristic for a musical fingerprint. Many such characteristics can then be combined into a large fingerprint put together.
• If you record a song with Shazam, only a short sequence is listened to and sent to the app server. Within a few seconds, the song is checked for striking features in the sequence and compared with the database. You will then receive your result.

In the next practical tip, we will show you how to recognize songs on the iPhone without the Shazam app.