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Android Music Technology

Shazam for Android Now Recognizes Music Playing Through Headphones (techcrunch.com) 44

Posted by msmash from the pushing-the-limits dept.
Shazam, the Apple-owned app that helps users identify songs playing around them, can now recognize songs you're listening to through your headphones when using an Android phone or tablet. From a report: Acquired by Apple for $400 million last year, the company introduced a feature called 'Pop-Up Shazam' to its Android app recently, which when enabled, works with any other Android app to track and identify songs playing externally or internally on the phone. It's a feature that many users have requested for years. Prior to this, when a user would chance upon a music track in say a YouTube video, they only had two inconvenient ways to shazam the song. They could either unplug the earphones from the phone and let the audio play through the built-in speakers, or draw an earpiece close to the mic of the phone. The new feature enables Shazam to track the audio signal beaming off of other apps, thereby not completely relying on just output from the surrounding and a phone's speaker. The app is tapping the audio signal by using a persistent notification that floats around and could be dragged -- like the ones from Facebook Messenger -- and can be activated by a single tap.
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Shazam for Android Now Recognizes Music Playing Through Headphones More

Shazam for Android Now Recognizes Music Playing Through Headphones

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  • An interesting balance (Score:3)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday June 11, 2019 @12:17PM (#58745396)

    One the one hand, this does indeed seem like a really useful ability, to just ask what song is playing no matter the source.

    On the other, I wonder at the ability of apps to monitor audio going to my headphones... I wonder what that permission even looks like, "Inter-device audio??".

    On the whole though I think the utility of this ability is more worth it than the danger. I wonder if the iPhone even allows this...

    • "One the one hand, this does indeed seem like a really useful ability, to just ask what song is playing no matter the source."

      If it's paying on my phone I just look at the title playing, I don't see why I would have to use another app for that.

      • If it's paying on my phone I just look at the title playing,

        Like the summary says though, it can be used on things like background music in YouTube videos (where the playing info would just display the video info, not the song).

        Heck, theoretically you could even use it for hold music since it works on audio going to your speakers/headphones, if you found some really amazing hold music... :-)

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        If it's paying on my phone I just look at the title playing, I don't see why I would have to use another app for that.

        It's not always that easy. For example, if there's something catchy playing on a gaming stream or YouTube video, it's probably royalty-free music, and diffing around for the attribution can be awkward on a phone. I like to collect good royalty-free music, so I find this feature appealing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

      Why is no one concerned about this on desktop operating systems, which have always been able to do this?

  • Every APP or media I play music through already has the music labeled. The only way I can see this even being used is if you hear a song over a speaker that you don't control otherwise literally everything now tells you what you're listening to. What am I missing here?

    • That's great if you're listening to songs. Not so good if you're watching youtube videos, watching netflix, or listening to a podcast.

    • For most of you, you have a valid argument...because most of you don't have built-in FM tuner on your phones. This is only useful if you're listening from an FM radio app, just like what I did when I had my HTC One (M7). The FM radio app launches a song ID app (like Sound Hound) to identify the song I listen to from the FM radio. I can no longer do this when I switched to an LG G6. But thanks to Shazam, I will be able to do it again like what I've been doing six years ago (yes, this feature is not new at a
  • How nice... this means the app will indeed hijack the sound socket? And now can listen to ANYTHING? That seems to be a downgrade if you ask me, and is propped as a feature. Plus, this is BS -> "It's a feature that many users have requested for years." hahaha make me laugh
    • I don't know what method was implemented on my HTC One (M7), but I had this feature on that phone. I listen to FM radio all day while at work and it was very useful since the radio station I listen to does not stream out the song title.
  • Hopefully we'll see a similar feature in SoundHound at some point.
  • While perhaps not quite as potentially damaging as being able to access the other application's private data and document folders directly, it's not that far of a stretch to imagine that there may be some security issues with this sort of ability.

  • Interesting implication (Score:3)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Tuesday June 11, 2019 @02:12PM (#58745994)
    That you can do this at all would mean one could write an app which captures an otherwise DRM-protected audio stream, and write a DRM-free perfect digital copy of the song. That's why this sort of functionality had to go through the analog hole in the past (holding the microphone up to the speaker) - the copyright holders had plugged this digital hole.

  • So, it's basically the "What-U-Hear" feature featured on other OSes, but instead of being under the control of the OS, we need an "app."

    Color me surprised that we need yet another damn app to do something the OS should be able to handle.

  • This is nothing new. I had this functionality on my old Sony Xperia X (Track ID app), and the first generation HTC One (Sound Hound app). These apps had to be launched from within the default FM radio app. This feature is missing (not doable) on my LG G6. I'm sure my phone can benefit from this, but I don't know if many would when phones with built-in radio tuner is no longer common.
  • There finally might be a way to record decent audio for gaming video capture, something very sadly lacking in Android currently, which ironically only allows capturing audio from the microphone.

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