Shazam - how good is it

[OldCorpse]

I've used Shazam a few years ago, but for whatever reason I have not used it since.

So I downloaded it to my iPhone and tried it out. My first impressions: pretty good, though not perfect.

I ran a few tests and it passed pretty fast.

However, not always. For example, I tested it against Brian Eno's "Top Boy" CD - it's not exactly obscure, as it's the soundtrack to a Netflix show (Opal label, licenced to Netflix Music LLC, 2023). I tested it in good conditions, i.e., no other noise except the music, walked up to the speaker, held the mic appropriate distance, no room acoustics problems of echo etc.

It didn't recognize the track 14 "Sweet Dark Section", I tried the last couple of minutes several times. End result each time - "No result".

But then I played the next track, 15, "Sky Blue Alert" and it cottoned on pretty fast. So, good job.

Obviously, it depends on how distinctive and complex the music is, so if the sound is too uniform without enough changes or many instruments and so on, it's possible Shazam won't nail it.

But overall, I'm reasonably impressed these few times. However, I have not tried obscure stuff yet, and no bootlegs/concert tapes, and that's what I'm gonna try soon, but I'm wondering what is your experience with Shazam? Basically, my New Year's resolution is to minimize the number of apps on my devices, as I find many times I download something and then never/rarely use it. I'm trying to decide how useful Shazam is going to be to me ...

 

[AZhappyjack]

We listen to quite a bit of older contemporary Christian music (1980-2010), and it seems to struggle with some of the older and less well-known stuff... ironically, if I knew the artist, etc, I would not need Shazam... but overall, I'd say it's a pretty solid tool for the task.

 

[OldCorpse]

Good info, dwfaust. I have a lot of regional stuff, like CDs of old Indian music, which I bought in India… I have my doubts as to Shazam recognizing those😢

The reason I’m asking about Shazam, is because a few years ago I ripped my CDs (over 5K!) to iTunes and then sold and gave away the physical CDs. In time, I realized that getting rid of the CDs was a mistake, because my iMac got lost (stolen), and while I had most of the music backed up on external drives, the cover art was in a separate folder only on the iMac (another mistake!), so I lost all my artwork.

So now I am slowly adding artwork as I find it, but for tons of it I actually have very little metadata, and I don’t remember many performers etc. which is where I was hoping Shazam might step in.

The irony is, that for better known stuff, it’s easier to find cover artwork online, and that’s what likely is where Shazam is the strongest, and I need it the least. It’s the obscure stuff where Shazam would be super useful, and probably the least effective. Oh well.