At a glance

Nov 05, 2020 Use Shazam’s Music Recognition Button on iPhone and iPad Now, with the Shazam button added to your iPhone or iPad, it’s time to use the music recognition feature. Open the Control Center by swiping down from the top-right corner of your phone or tablet’s display (or by swiping up from the bottom of the screen on older devices). It’s one way Apple is using Shazam, which it acquired in 2018 for an estimated $400 million. And you don’t need to have the Shazam app installed for this to work. All you do is add a button to the. Use Shazam’s Music Recognition Button on iPhone and iPad Now, with the Shazam button added to your iPhone or iPad, it’s time to use the music recognition feature. Open the Control Center by swiping down from the top-right corner of your phone or tablet’s display (or by swiping up from the bottom of the screen on older devices).

• “Shazam is an app that feels like magic” - Techradar.com “Shazam is a gift. A game changer” - Pharrell Williams, GQ WHY YOU’LL LOVE IT Find the name of any song in seconds.
• Mar 19, 2021 On iPhone or iPad, say “Hey Siri,” then ask what the song is. On iPhone or iPad, add the Shazam widget to identify music in the Today View. Use Shazam on your Apple Watch to Shazam tracks. To identify music from the menu bar of your Mac, get Shazam for Mac from the Mac App Store. On HomePod, say “Hey Siri, Shazam this song.”.

Our Verdict

You know that song? On the radio? By that band? What’s it called? You know, the one with the guitars? That really catchy one?

An app for the iPhone purports to answer questions like that. It’s called Shazam. You’ve undoubtedly heard of it. Apple featured the app in one of its cute TV spots touting the iPhone: “You know when you don’t know what song is playing? And it’s driving you crazy? With the Shazam app from the App Store, you just hold your iPhone to the song and in seconds you’ll know who sings it and where to get it.”

Briefly, here is how Shazam works: You launch the app and tap the “tag” button at the top right of the screen. Then hold your device close to the source of the song you would like identified. Take utmost care not to cover the microphone! (Because it requires a mic to work, Shazam isn’t compatible with the original iPod touch; second-generation models are supported.) Shazam will take a short sample of the track, “analyze” it, and spit back an answer a few seconds later. About a quarter of the time, the answer is “Sorry, we can’t tag this music.”

Shazam handles some music better than others. Shazam loves current Top 40 hits, most classic rock, and indie favorites. Shazam doesn’t particularly care for movie scores, obscure indie rock, surf music, or ’90s vintage hardcore, and is often confused by electronica—among other things. I didn’t even bother to see if Shazam could distinguish early Beethoven from late Mozart—too many recordings, I suspect, for Shazam’s galley slaves to wrap their collective mind around.

Stumping Shazam is easy and fun. When I took my first pass at Shazam, I selected soundtracks and scores from my iTunes library to test Shazam’s magic. I didn’t set out to choose obscure cues or snippets from even more obscure movies. I simply went down the list of albums and selected a representative track or two from each. Of 60 selections, Shazam identified 42 titles correctly. Of those titles, Shazam identified just 33 of the artists correctly or at all.

The app does better with straight-ahead popular music, although sometimes Shazam’s hearing can be a little bit off. I sampled around 150 more or less well-known songs from a few iTunes Genius playlists that I’ve saved. Shazam’s success rate was closer to 85 percent, with some surprising stumbles. Shazam first misidentified The Clash’s “London Calling” as “Ball O’ Fire” by the Skatalites, then couldn’t identify the song at all. Shazam got it right on the third attempt. This happens a lot with Shazam. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

Shazam is error-prone in other ways. If you do successfully tag a track or an artist, Shazam lets you purchase the track from the iTunes Music Store or peruse the artist’s biography and discography. If the song is associated with a YouTube video, Shazam gives you a link—often to pirated material or, in one notable instance, to a video of a pair of teenage girls dancing along to Bono and the Secret Machines. The discographies link to albums, and the albums link to songs samples that do not play. Shazam is full of mysteries.

When you read a biography of an artist, it helps to know something about the artist before hand. Sometimes, Shazam’s information is correct. Sometimes the information is laughably wrong.

For what it’s worth, you can sort your tags in Shazam by song title, artist and date. There is also a way to sort out your untagged samples. Shazam requires a Wi-Fi, EDGE, or 3G connection to work, so if you take a song sample someplace where you don’t have a strong signal, the app will save the tags to send later—delayed frustration, as it were.

Shazam wants you to share your tags and encourage your friends to buy more music. (“Dude! Check out this cool song I just heard by a band called The Skatalites! They sound exactly like The Clash!”) Tap on a song in your tag list and scroll down to “Share tag.” Shazam will launch your device’s Mail app with an automatically generated e-mail. The recipient can then buy the song from iTunes, if there is a link—but no guarantees. That’s another one of Shazam’s mysteries.

There is apparently no way for an informed user to contribute to the sum of the app’s shallow pool of knowledge. Shazam is adequate at telling you, as if by magic, the name of that catchy song by this week’s hot band that is likely to be next week’s one-hit wonder, if remembered at all.

Too bad. What Shazam doesn’t know could fill many excellent record collections.

Shazam is compatible with any iPhone or second-generation iPod touch running the iPhone 2.1 software update.

[Ben Boychuk doesn’t mean to brag, but he can name that tune in two notes. He’s a freelance writer and columnist in Rialto, Calif.]

This article was update at 2:27 p.m. PT to add EDGE to the list of network connections Shazam works with.

Raymond forklift dealer. Shazam identifies a song by creating a unique digital fingerprint to match what you’re hearing with one of the millions of songs in the Shazam database.

Use the Shazam app

If you have the Shazam app installed on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac, you can use the app to identify music and save them to your library.

1. Open the Shazam app on your device.
   
2. Tap or click the Shazam button to identify what’s playing around you.

When Shazam identifies the song, it’s saved in My Music, along with all your other previous Shazams.

After you identify a song, you can connect to Apple Music and other music services to listen to your Shazam.

If you don’t have an internet connection, the app still creates a unique digital fingerprint to match against the Shazam database the next time your device is connected to the internet. If a song can’t be identified, it will disappear from your pending Shazams.

Use Auto Shazam

To have Shazam automatically identify what’s playing around you, touch and hold (or double-click on Mac) the Shazam button . When Auto Shazam is on, Shazam matches what you’re hearing with songs in the Shazam database—even when you switch to another app. Shazam never saves or stores what it hears.

You can then find the Shazams identified with Auto Shazam in My Music, grouped together by date.

To turn off Auto Shazam, tap or click the Shazam button.

Use Shazam in Control Center on iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

You can Shazam songs right from Control Center on your iPhone or on your iPad.* To add Shazam to Control Center, go to Settings > Control Center, then tap the Add button next to Music Recognition.

To identify songs from Control Center, tap the Shazam button to identify what's currently playing on your device or around you. Shazam can identify songs playing on your device even if you're using headphones.

* Requires iOS or iPad OS 14.2 or later.

More ways to identify music

• On iPhone or iPad, say “Hey Siri,” then ask what the song is.
• On iPhone or iPad, add the Shazam widget to identify music in the Today View.
• Use Shazam on your Apple Watch to Shazam tracks.
• To identify music from the menu bar of your Mac, get Shazam for Mac from the Mac App Store.
• On HomePod, say “Hey Siri, Shazam this song.”
• Use the Shazam It action to add music recognition to your Shortcuts.

See your previous Shazams

You can see your previous Shazams in the Shazam app on your device and online when you create a Shazam account.

• On iPhone or iPad, swipe up on the main Shazam screen to access My Music.
• On Mac, recent Shazams appear below the Shazam button.
• On Apple Watch, recent Shazams appear below the Shazam button, and are also saved to My Music on the paired iPhone.
• To access your Shazams on your other Apple devices and online at shazam.com/myshazam, you can save your Shazams in iCloud. This also ensures that you won't lose your Shazams if something happens to your device.

Change your settings

In the Shazam app, swipe up to My Music from the main Shazam screen, then tap the Settings button to adjust Shazam settings:

• Control Notifications from Shazam.
• To have Shazam automatically start listening when the app is opened, turn on “Shazam on app start.”
• Use iCloud to back up your Shazams.

Microphone settings on iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Shazam needs access to the microphone on your device to hear what you're listening to. On iPhone or iPad, open Settings, scroll down to the installed apps and tap Shazam, then turn on Microphone. If you don’t see an option for Microphone, you might have restrictions turned on for Privacy settings.

Shazam App For Iphone 6 Plus

Get help

Learn more

Shazam While In Other App Iphone

• Use Shazam on Android devices.
• You can create a Shazam account to keep track of all your Shazams and view them on www.shazam.com/myshazam.
• In addition to Apple Music, you can connect Shazam to other services like Snapchat and Spotify.
• Learn about Shazam's Terms & Conditions.
• Learn about Shazam and privacy.