Shazam launches Mac app with always-on listening mode
Popular music, TV and ad recognition app Shazam made its way to the Mac on Wednesday with a new app that operates in background to serve up instant matches, with one-click access to lyrics, music videos and iTunes purchasing.
Shazam version 1.0.1 breaks out the service's audio recognition software from mobile devices and puts it on the Mac, harnessing a desktop's microphones for always-on listening and near instant matching of songs, television shows, ads and more.
In practice, Shazam for Mac is basically a port of the iOS app, but supercharged for a desktop experience. Since Macs can run background tasks without having to worry about battery drain, Shazam is able to continuously monitor ambient noise for recognizable content, stream to their servers and return accurate matches in a matter of seconds.
For example, if a song is playing on a stereo, or over the speakers at a coffee shop, Shazam for Mac identifies the track and throws up a notification leading to online lyrics and purchasing options. Early testing showed near-instant recognition and notification, as fast or faster than the dedicated iOS app.
All recently recognized content can be accessed from a menu bar icon, which also serves as Shazam's main control hub. If available, cover art for songs, TV shows and other media show up alongside a "Download on iTunes" button that launches Apple's digital storefront for easy purchasing. Alternatively, clicking on the cover art or title opens a page on Shazam's website with lyrics, media previews, videos, buying choices, sharing options and more.
The drop-down pane also features a switch to toggle the always-listening function on or off, while a settings menu contains controls to turn on launch-at-startup, log in to social media accounts, download the mobile Shazam app and email customer support.
Shazam for Mac is available now as a free 3.3MB download from the Mac App Store.
Shazam version 1.0.1 breaks out the service's audio recognition software from mobile devices and puts it on the Mac, harnessing a desktop's microphones for always-on listening and near instant matching of songs, television shows, ads and more.
In practice, Shazam for Mac is basically a port of the iOS app, but supercharged for a desktop experience. Since Macs can run background tasks without having to worry about battery drain, Shazam is able to continuously monitor ambient noise for recognizable content, stream to their servers and return accurate matches in a matter of seconds.
For example, if a song is playing on a stereo, or over the speakers at a coffee shop, Shazam for Mac identifies the track and throws up a notification leading to online lyrics and purchasing options. Early testing showed near-instant recognition and notification, as fast or faster than the dedicated iOS app.
All recently recognized content can be accessed from a menu bar icon, which also serves as Shazam's main control hub. If available, cover art for songs, TV shows and other media show up alongside a "Download on iTunes" button that launches Apple's digital storefront for easy purchasing. Alternatively, clicking on the cover art or title opens a page on Shazam's website with lyrics, media previews, videos, buying choices, sharing options and more.
The drop-down pane also features a switch to toggle the always-listening function on or off, while a settings menu contains controls to turn on launch-at-startup, log in to social media accounts, download the mobile Shazam app and email customer support.
Shazam for Mac is available now as a free 3.3MB download from the Mac App Store.
Comments
No Thanks. Shazam sucks nowadays. Too many ads.
They make you pay to avoid the ads and then they still send ads after you update.
Don't use their crap. iOS 8 will present a much better interface.
[I]edit[/I]: actually, the fire phone is like the 'always watching'. this is the 'always listening'. What's the line? "Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain"
Always listening? Huh - cool. Sounds entirely not creepy.
Now if only it could be integrated with NEST.
How much of my iPhone data allocation is being consumed by Shazam sending these surveillance always-listening sound samples to the NSA datacenter?
Since the phone companies can bill Netflix for streaming data, they ought to find a way to bill Shazam for their data usage, too. The consumer should not have to pay for all these background data hogs, since they benefit the company, not the consumer, and the consumer has no easy way to block the data usage selectively.
Why do people want everything in life to be free? Someone needs to pay, nothing can be free in life. To see the sun come up costs money.[/quote]
That's just...wrong, we should rightfully expect for an app to be ad-free once paid for. Maybe their fine print says different?
But this app is for OSX.
in case you have not noticed. it does not just use the mic. i was playing a video file in VLC with earphones in and it still gave me the correct songs playing and detected what video and episode i was playing... i think i may be deep deleting it quickly...