Shazam may have lost some of its 'ooh' factor, but it's still devilishly useful if you don't know what that cool song they're playing is. When the app was first released for iPhone, it was a must-download, if for nothing else than its effectiveness as a party trick. The Windows Phone version was updated last June, and while sharing the strengths and limitations of every Shazam app version, it offers some Windows Phone specific capabilities. But Shazam is not without competition on the platform: Not only can you try the similar SoundHound app, but the built-in Bing search feature in Windows Phone has a microphone feature that listens for ambient music and identifies it for you. So let's take Shazam out for a spin and see whether you really need it.
shazam windows phone
InterfaceShazam's store description boasts that the app has a "glorious new UI" for Windows Phone 8. At first glance, it's really the most basic interface you can imagine: Just a single big button saying "tag now." As with most windows apps, you swipe sideways to get to different pages. After the Tag Now page, these include pages for your recent tags, chart, and local tags. The app's live tile lets you see album art for your last tag, and you can make another live tile for Tag Now, so you can immediately start song recognition. Finally, among interface goodies is the ability to use the album art of your last-viewed tag as the phone's lock screen background.
But when I headed to an independent coffee shop, things got dicier: The app was unable to identify anything on the hipster baristas' playlist. I held the phone up to the speaker, and I didn't' think the ambient noise was louder than the restaurant and Starbucks, but that might have been a factor in its inability to find the songs. Nor was the app able to identify a song playing on SomaFM, Terre Thaemiz's Hovering Glows or even M-Seven's Contained.
If your phone has no data connection, you can still tag off-line: the app will try to match the audio once a connection becomes available, just as is possible in the iOS app. If just finding out the name of that song that's playing isn't quite enough, you can choose Tag Chart to see top hits, and local tags to see what people nearby are listening to.
"Windows Phone 8 users now have access to a great smartphone experience, from faster tagging and a new interactive map, where users can discover the music people are listening to around them. This is more than just the music that's already popular; these are often songs people are discovering for the first time."
Shazam is an application that can identify music, movies, advertising, and television shows, based on a short sample played and using the microphone on the device.[2] It was created by London-based Shazam Entertainment, and has been owned by Apple Inc. since 2018. The software is available for Android, macOS, iOS, Wear OS, watchOS and as a Google Chrome extension.
Shazam identifies songs using an audio fingerprint based on a time-frequency graph called a spectrogram. It uses a smartphone or computer's built-in microphone to gather a brief sample of audio being played. Shazam stores a catalogue of audio fingerprints in a database. The user tags a song for 10 seconds and the application creates an audio fingerprint. Shazam works by analyzing the captured sound and seeking a match based on an acoustic fingerprint in a database of millions of songs.[7] If it finds a match, it sends information such as the artist, song title, and album back to the user. Some implementations of Shazam incorporate relevant links to services such as iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, or Groove Music.[8]
Initially, in 2002, the service was launched only in the UK and was known as "2580", as the number was the shortcode that customers dialled from their mobile phone to get music recognized.[3] The phone would automatically hang up after 30 seconds. A result was then sent to the user in the form of a text message containing the song title and artist name. At a later date, the service also began to add hyperlinks in the text message to allow the user to download the song online.[14]
Shazam launched in the US on the AT&T Wireless network in 2004 in a joint offering with Musicphone, a now defunct San Francisco-based company. The service was free at launch with AT&T saying that it would charge $0.99 for each use in future.[15]
Shazam Entertainment provides an application for connecting artists and fans through music discovery. It offers Shazam, a mobile application for iOS, Android, and Windows phones that enables people to discover, explore, and share their favorite music and TV.
Shazam's Chrome extension is useful, especially to those who love streaming on their laptops or desktops. You can easily identify songs playing in a Netflix movie or TV show even with your headphones are connected. It also saves you from the extra step of getting your phone out of pocket. 2ff7e9595c
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