Shazam For Mac
As you may have heard, will be. Having the ability to identify a song playing in the background (and then purchase it via the iTunes Store) is powerful for mobile devices. But what about those of us sitting in front of our Macs?
The answer comes today in the form of the free Shazam for Mac app. Available from the Mac App Store, you simply download, double-click to install, and Shazam keeps an ear out via your Mac’s built-in mic or a microphone plugged into the computer’s microphone port (USB mics are not currently supported). I’ve had a couple of days to play with it and here’s what I’ve seen. Shazam makes itself known by appearing in your Mac’s menu bar and starts listening right away. You can click on its icon and flip its switch to Off if you’d like to disable it. Otherwise it will stop listening if it hasn’t done anything for four hours. Revisit everything Shazam has identified from the Shazam menu.
Shazam is the Mac version of the popular iOS app that lets you discover and share songs playing around you. Catch the music and TV playing around you without ever digging a phone out of your pocket. Go nuts, match it all. Shazam Features. Operates magically in the background, ready to name that tune at a moment's notice. Shazam is about to teach your Mac a few new tricks. Download Shazam, and bring the magic home. The app you've come to rely on as your go-to music expert has been given a major upgrade for your Mac.
When it hears a song it can identify, a notification appears listing the track title and artist. After a couple of seconds that notification vanishes and the track entry appears not only in Notification Center but also in the Shazam menu. There it’s represented by album artwork, title, artist, and a link for purchasing the track from the iTunes Store. This is useful for those times when you want to revisit tracks that played in the background when you had other things to do. Click on a track in the notification or the Shazam menu and your default web browser launches, takes you to the Shazam website, and provides more information about the track. That information includes the host album and its tracks, related videos, recommended tracks based on other people’s purchase of the track, and a USA Top 100. You can also purchase the track or album from this page as well as share the page via Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.
Shazam For Mac
If, at a later date, you can’t recall what the track sounds like, you can click a Preview This Track button to hear a portion of it. (You can preview other tracks on the album as well.) The Shazam site lets you preview all album tracks as well as see related videos. Why would you want a copy of Shazam on your computer when using it with a mobile device seems to make more sense? The coffeeshop scenario is an obvious idea. As you consume caffeine and answer the day’s email on your laptop, Shazam will create a list of tunes playing behind you. But it can also be useful with a housebound computer. For example, I left my laptop open while watching.
When Emma Stone first appeared on screen Shazam told me that it was to the accompaniment of The Shins’ “No Way Down.” In my brief tests Shazam performed reasonably well. It shrugged its virtual shoulders at a couple of tracks I played via Beats Music (David Starobin’s instrumental piece, “Synchronisms No. 10” and Yes’s “Siberian Khatru,” for example) and it misidentified Roxy Music’s “Prairie Rose” as the group’s “If It Takes All Night.” And there were cases where tracks were identified but lyrics not available. However, if I played reasonably well known tracks chances were good that it would recognize them in a couple of seconds and associated lyrics would be available from the site. Again, Shazam for Mac is free (because the company makes its money from music sales rather than song identification). It’s unobtrusive and handy for when you and your Mac are surrounded by music.
I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t download a copy.
Most companies are moving from desktop to mobile, but Shazam is going in the other direction, announcing today that its popular music and TV recognition app is now available to download on Mac as a desktop application. When on, Shazam will silently listen in the background for music played from both the Mac itself and other device around you, giving you a gentle notification when it finds a matching song or TV show. Shazam on desktop might not immediately sound like an obvious fit, but when we consider how many times we grab our phones to scan a bit of a YouTube video or TV show we stumble across, the benefits start to surface. You can choose to have Shazam run from startup, or just activate it when you need it. Shazam.com has also been given a facelift for the launch of the new app.
You can hop straight from Shazam's app to the website where you'll find lyrics for the song and more information about the artist discography. The bad news for PC owners is this is going to be only for Mac for the time being, however Shazam Chief Product Officer Daniel Danker told TechRadar that PC could get it in the future. 'We have a brilliant partnership with Apple so we started there. We'll see how it goes. If this is a phenomenal success, we'll be looking at other platforms as well.' Mac users can go download the Shazam app from the Mac App Store right now.
The sound of music. You'll get a gentle notification when Shazam makes a match And once it's found a match, Shazam will offer a quick way to see lyrics for the music you're hearing. Unfortunately you can't use Shazam for Mac to boot up a song in Spotify, but Danker promised us that 'absolutely streaming services are going to make their way into this at some point.' While Shazam's always-listening function is just an option, there will no doubt be more than a few who are concerned about privacy.
But Danker told us that Shazam has no way of candidly recording conversations when it's listening out for music. 'We're incredibly clear about privacy,' he said.
'We actually don't record audio. We instantly convert the audio coming in into an audio fingerprint, and that fingerprint essentially just identifies the distinctive points about that music.
'It then compares those distinctive points with the tens of millions of tracks that are in our database. So there's no audio moving back and forth. In fact you can't even use the fingerprint to reconstruct the audio.' Thanks to a partnership with Shazam, users of Apple's upcoming iOS 8 will be able to scan songs with a single press of the home button. After Shazam for Mac, Danker believes this is the next obvious phase of making Shazam more easily and quickly accessible. After all, time is of the essence when you're trying to recognise a catchy tune from a fleeting advert. 'The Siri integration is a good third step on the path to more seamlessly integrating it into people's lives.'