How Does Shazam Actually Work?

Being excited about everyday tech isn't something any of us do anymore, but do we know how it works - not me! Shri Khalpada has us covered with How The Heck? , a series of interactive explanations of everyday technology designed primarily for curious, non-technical readers.

1. QR Codes: Black-and-white squares that survive coffee stains
2. GPS: Turning time into distance with Einstein's help
3. Shazam: A connect-the-dots trick for sound
4. Solar Panels: The Sun, silicon, and soft costs

If you like these, you can follow the author, buy him a coffee, or suggest what comes next.

I fell across How The Heck Does Shazam Work? and the article, like his others, walks you through the method not only with everyday English but wee interactive widgets that help you visualise what's going on. It doesn't scrimp on the details, you will come out of it knowing exactly how Shazam and the like work!

In a nutshell:

1. Your phone captures sound as a waveform.
2. A process called the Fast Fourier Transform is used to convert it into a three-dimensional representation of sound called a spectrogram.
3. An algorithm keeps only the loudest peaks of the spectrogram.
4. The algorithm pairs nearby peaks to create unique fingerprint hashes.
5. Each hash is an address.
6. The system looks up every hash from your clip and instantly which songs share them.

But really, you need to read / play with his full article to truly understand how Shazam and tech like it works.

Shri has created many more data-driven learning pages, it is most excellent: https://perthirtysix.com/section/learn

btw: I didn't know Shazam had been bought by Apple in 2018 for a reported US$400 million, is that why iPhone people talk about it all the time?

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