107 | Shazam: From SMS To Spectrograms

In this episode, Luigi and Ravi dive into a brief story about Shazam’s user experience evolution. A journey that began in 2002 and reached new heights with Apple's acquisition in 2018. Shazam's ingenious design simplified the user experience, addressing music discovery and a vast song database. Explore how a simple text-based interface transformed the way we identify songs. Luigi and Ravi also discuss the technological marvel that powers Shazam, from acoustic fingerprinting to spectral analysis. Learn how it turned complex audio data into song names with a single button press. Finally they discuss the future of music discovery, similar to the Music Genome Project and its impact on music curation.

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Where to find Luigi and Ravi:

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• Follow Ravi on Twitter: https://twitter.com/raviisoccupied

Referenced:

• Ishkur’s Guide to Music: https://music.ishkur.com
• Everynoise: https://everynoise.com/engenremap.html
• Music Genome Project: https://community.pandora.com/t5/Community-Blog/MGP2-What-s-Next-for-the-Music-Genome-Project/ba-p/120065
• The Toptal article Ravi kept talking about: https://www.toptal.com/algorithms/shazam-it-music-processing-fingerprinting-and-recognition
• Shazam Kit: https://developer.apple.com/shazamkit/
• Story of Shazam’s team: https://medium.com/swlh/the-story-of-shazam-the-startup-days-6bccebd17d84
• How Shazam works: https://youtu.be/b6xeOLjeKs0?si=h8TF4GdHdmlyGl21
• Spotify’s AI recommendation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGntmcy_HX8