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Why are there so few Shazam alternatives? Does it have something to do with licensing perhaps? The algorithm itself is fascinating but I don't get why this spac
by hideo 3y ago
Why are there so few Shazam alternatives? Does it have something to do with licensing perhaps? The algorithm itself is fascinating but I don't get why this space seems to have just one player - i.e. Shazam
- jdadj 3y agoSoundHound is a credible alternative.
- klipt 3y agoSoundHound it's actually much more impressive because it can recognize hummed or whistled songs too!
- esafak 3y agoGoogle search in Android can do that too. Albeit not very well.
- 2c2c2c 3y agopixel series since 6 has an option to passively listen and document songs by default. probably the only feature I miss moving to iphone
- jiberius 3y agoIt dates all the way back to the Pixel 2 from 2017, still feels like a magical feature though. I think the historical log of songs that the phone heard launched a little later, on the Pixel 3.
- neop1x 3y agoI used to use SoundHound originally, but their Android app became so bloated that it took a long time to start it. As a result, I switched to Shazam and have not used SoundHound since.
- pxeger1 3y agoIt definitely has more than one player. Google Assistant has had this ability for a while, for example. But Shazam has the advantage of being built in to iOS, which might be why you think it’s the only player
- tialaramex 3y agoWhere's the value? My Android phone just does this locally, obviously Shazam has more storage and so they're going to handle more obscure stuff that way, but for example I just set my "Power of Love" playlist running, and the Pixel's built in "Now Playing" knows both the Frankie Goes To Hollywood track and the Huey Lewis number from Back to the Future. When a "phone" was a dumb device just barely capable of implementing GSM and displaying a clock then this might be worth something as a business, but given where the $0 baseline is, I don't see enough margin to justify competition, I'm surprised even Shazam still makes commercial sense.
- TerrifiedMouse 3y ago> I'm surprised even Shazam still makes commercial sense. Isn’t Shazam owned by Apple now? It doesn’t need to make “financial sense” if it’s a service Apple runs.
- Racing0461 3y agoI disagree. Apple isn't like Google/FB where they take a loss on a service and make it back on the backend with ads. Apple seems like they evaluate each service as if it were a physical product ie it costs X and each service needs to stand on its own and make X + Y back.
- al_borland 3y agoI was a SoundHound user for a long time. It came out around the same time as Shazam. Shazam had all the brand recognition, but I typically went for the underdog. Recently, in an effort to simply things, I moved over to Shazam. It’s owned by Apple now, so it’s already built into the iPhone, even without the app. The app allows for saving things a bit easier and I find it to be a lot cleaner than the SoundHound app.
- jldugger 3y agoMy understanding is that there is a patent holder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shazam_(application)#Patent_infringement_lawsuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shazam_(application)#Patent_in... in the US.
- willseth 3y agoThey have a patent, which IIRC should be expiring fairly soon (the original patent anyway)
- ronsor 3y agoI'm pretty sure it expired a few years ago now.
- Thaxll 3y agoI remember a while back 10 years? On HN someone did a poc ( code ) of Shazamn like and he was sued or asked to remove everything.
- forgotpwd16 3y agoBesides potential licese issues (that may not exist), legally creating the hashes database is a big effort as access to an near-all-encompassing song library is required.