{"slug": "shazam", "name": "Shazam", "category": "media", "category_name": "Media and creative", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 9, "warners": 2, "score": 1.838, "rising": 1.67, "first": "2025-12-27", "latest": "2026-09-23", "why": "I managed to add a Shazam Now button using a Shazam widget", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 3, "compare": 1, "warn": 2}, "spark": [0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I managed to add a Shazam Now button using a Shazam widget", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.shazam.com", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Shazam"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 794814784, "item_id": 49675924, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49675924", "by": "beached_whale", "date": "2026-09-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It is pretty neat", "excerpt": "It is pretty neat and several resources online explaining it but it chunks the recoding and does a hash of the fft of each frame i think which reduces the data a lot. The server has a pre hashed database https://hackernoon.com/how-shazam-works-in-a-nutshell", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'"}, {"id": 793579953, "item_id": 49598747, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49598747", "by": "BLKNSLVR", "date": "2026-09-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My Shazam usage is about 75% Nando's.", "excerpt": "This may be long dead, but a relatively recent musical discovery I've come across is Nando's. They play some great Southern American music, with real nice vibes and beats. My Shazam usage is about 75% Nando's. And I don't mean Southern United States, I mean real, geographical definition South American. There's even a pretty long playlist someone has curated, specifically called Nando's Music: https://open.spotify.com", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fastpotify"}, {"id": 747059585, "item_id": 46691224, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46691224", "by": "BoppreH", "date": "2026-01-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I managed to add a Shazam Now button using a Shazam widget", "excerpt": "I managed to add a Shazam Now button using a Shazam widget, not a shortcut. Give it a try! I just installed Octopi on this thread's recommendation. Pretty good so far, and I'm happy to remove the useless Google search bar from the bottom of my Pixel (I use Kagi and Firefox, neither of which can be configured on that bar). Also satisfied how you can resize widgets to any size, regardless of what the widget asks for.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Nova Launcher Added Facebook and Google Ads Tracking"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 796962336, "item_id": 49810146, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49810146", "by": "nunez", "date": "2026-09-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it's always been flakey but it feels flakier lately", "excerpt": "I'm with you. The new Watch update messed a lot of stuff up for me. I have Shazam linked to my Action Button; it's always been flakey but it feels flakier lately. Losing Walkie-Talkie is a big miss too, as my wife and I use that feature often.", "context": "Apple Watch user", "use_case": "song recognition on Apple Watch", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS 27: Workaround to avoid downloading AI models and save storage"}, {"id": 765963856, "item_id": 47872741, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47872741", "by": "sandos", "date": "2026-04-22", "stance": "warn", "quote": "It did not find a single one correctly.", "excerpt": "Well, my latest guess is: not at all. It has been working \"fine\" for me generally for popular music. But then I was at a ice skating competition where there were some really nice synth:y music going on in the pauses, and I used Shazam on several of the songs, and I tried several times on each. It did not find a single one correctly. Either this was unreleased music or very small niched music or something, or Shazam t", "context": "", "use_case": "identifying music", "switched_from": "", "story": "How the Heck does Shazam work?"}]}], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["song recognition on apple watch", "identifying music", "song identification"], "compared": [{"slug": "kagi", "name": "Kagi", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "octopi", "name": "Octopi", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835366", "title": "How the Heck does Shazam work?", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46686655", "title": "Nova Launcher Added Facebook and Google Ads Tracking", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49787535", "title": "macOS 27: Workaround to avoid downloading AI models and save storage", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49645480", "title": "LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49517448", "title": "Fastpotify", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46425198", "title": "Google is dead. Where do we go now?", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 2, "warn": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 796962336, "item_id": 49810146, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49810146", "by": "nunez", "date": "2026-09-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it's always been flakey but it feels flakier lately", "excerpt": "I'm with you. The new Watch update messed a lot of stuff up for me. I have Shazam linked to my Action Button; it's always been flakey but it feels flakier lately. Losing Walkie-Talkie is a big miss too, as my wife and I use that feature often.", "context": "Apple Watch user", "use_case": "song recognition on Apple Watch", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS 27: Workaround to avoid downloading AI models and save storage"}, {"id": 794814784, "item_id": 49675924, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49675924", "by": "beached_whale", "date": "2026-09-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It is pretty neat", "excerpt": "It is pretty neat and several resources online explaining it but it chunks the recoding and does a hash of the fft of each frame i think which reduces the data a lot. The server has a pre hashed database https://hackernoon.com/how-shazam-works-in-a-nutshell", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'"}, {"id": 793579953, "item_id": 49598747, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49598747", "by": "BLKNSLVR", "date": "2026-09-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My Shazam usage is about 75% Nando's.", "excerpt": "This may be long dead, but a relatively recent musical discovery I've come across is Nando's. They play some great Southern American music, with real nice vibes and beats. My Shazam usage is about 75% Nando's. And I don't mean Southern United States, I mean real, geographical definition South American. There's even a pretty long playlist someone has curated, specifically called Nando's Music: https://open.spotify.com", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fastpotify"}, {"id": 765963856, "item_id": 47872741, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47872741", "by": "sandos", "date": "2026-04-22", "stance": "warn", "quote": "It did not find a single one correctly.", "excerpt": "Well, my latest guess is: not at all. It has been working \"fine\" for me generally for popular music. But then I was at a ice skating competition where there were some really nice synth:y music going on in the pauses, and I used Shazam on several of the songs, and I tried several times on each. It did not find a single one correctly. Either this was unreleased music or very small niched music or something, or Shazam t", "context": "", "use_case": "identifying music", "switched_from": "", "story": "How the Heck does Shazam work?"}, {"id": 765956976, "item_id": 47872311, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47872311", "by": "wood_spirit", "date": "2026-04-22", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Reminds me of Roy Van Rijn\u2019s prototype that got a cease and desist letter! Lots of community disappointment at the time! https://hn.algolia.com/?q=royvanrijn", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "How the Heck does Shazam work?"}, {"id": 747059585, "item_id": 46691224, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46691224", "by": "BoppreH", "date": "2026-01-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I managed to add a Shazam Now button using a Shazam widget", "excerpt": "I managed to add a Shazam Now button using a Shazam widget, not a shortcut. Give it a try! I just installed Octopi on this thread's recommendation. Pretty good so far, and I'm happy to remove the useless Google search bar from the bottom of my Pixel (I use Kagi and Firefox, neither of which can be configured on that bar). Also satisfied how you can resize widgets to any size, regardless of what the widget asks for.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Nova Launcher Added Facebook and Google Ads Tracking"}, {"id": 747028306, "item_id": 46689269, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46689269", "by": "ssl-3", "date": "2026-01-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use it to identify the music I hear, and that's all I want it for", "excerpt": "Thanks for the tip. I opened up my phone to see about giving Octopi a shot, and (amusingly? alarmingly?) Nova Launcher produced a popup warning me that it would now feature ads. Anyway, my launcher needs are pretty minimal. Switching over and recreating a familiar layout was easy enough. I do find one function missing, though: Some shortcut functionality seems missing in Octopi that was present in Nova. For instance:", "context": "", "use_case": "song identification", "switched_from": "", "story": "Nova Launcher Added Facebook and Google Ads Tracking"}, {"id": 742815924, "item_id": 46425995, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46425995", "by": "sdoering", "date": "2025-12-29", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Like Shazam - I just find this thing to be on my phone, so no need for an additional app.", "excerpt": "Wow - than at least my behavior - and that of quite an impressive amount of non tech people in my circle of acquaintances - are \"unnatural\". I know people who took a photo of their car's driver side mirror cap (the thing that is on the opposite of the drivers side mirror and often colored like the rest of the car) - and asked chatGPT to search for the part. Because they were not able to navigate the respective auto p", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google is dead. Where do we go now?"}, {"id": 742489792, "item_id": 46405612, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46405612", "by": "MarkusWandel", "date": "2025-12-27", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "that Shazam doesn't even recognize", "excerpt": "This is cool. Clicked on a random one, and cool techno, or whatever you call it, that Shazam doesn't even recognize. https://intertapes.net/ocho/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Intertapes \u2013 collection of found cassette tapes from different locations"}]}