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shazam

Shazam for Mac Download Tutorial

Shazam Entertainment Ltd. has made Shazam app available on Mac App Store on July 31, 2014. This something all the Mac users have been waiting for because Shazam is already available for other OS a few years ago. It is definitely one of the greatest Mac apps released in the App Store this year. Within a few months, Shazam for Mac has received more than 400 ratings from Mac users and the current version has three-and-a-half star rating. There are also a lot of positive reviews written by Mac users who are using this app.

Shazam for Mac

Is that a magical thing in this app and Mac users can’t resist to download it? For Mac users who have never use Shazam before, you might not know Shazam really comes with magic features. Shazam is a music expert. It is like an intimate to you if you download and install it to your Mac. With Shazam installed, you can play an unknown song from your iPod Touch near to your Mac microphone and Shazam is able to give you the song name, artists, and lyrics within a minute. You will be given a link to iTunes to buy the tracks too. The success rate is almost 100% as long as the environment is not uproarious. See how does Shazam work.

How to Download Shazam for Mac

As Shazam is already available in the Mac App Store, it is extremely easy to download and install it to a Mac, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini, or any Mac computer and desktop. Open your Mac and connect to the internet. Go to Mac App store and search for “Shazam”. Click on the install button and you will get Shazam for Mac within a minute. Shazam is a free app so there is no need to pay anything for it. However, there is also a premium version available where it comes with more unique features. Alternatively, you can also try Shazam online version if you love the app but don’t feel like to install it.

Shazam for Mac
Shazam for Mac Screenshot

Shazam works on these Mac versions:

  • Mac OS X Version 10.6: “Snow Leopard”
  • Mac OS X Version 10.7: “Lion”
  • Mac OS X Version 10.8: “Mountain Lion”
  • Mac OS X Version 10.9: “Mavericks”
  • Mac OS X Version 10.10: “Yosemite”

Shazam Alternatives for Mac and iOS users: Spotify, Midomi, SoundHound, MusixMatch and Musipedia. Some of them work faultlessly for PC users too.

Shazam is Not Working for Mac

For some reasons, if Shazam is not working on your Mac after you download the app from Mac App Store, you will need to check your internet connection. Sometimes the Shazam .app file might corrupt when you try to download Shazam to your Mac. Shazam doesn’t work if the .app file is not completely downloaded. Next, check your Mac OS X version. Shazam for Mac doesn’t work on these OS X version because they are not compatible.

  • Mac OS X Version 10.0: “Cheetah”
  • Mac OS X Version 10.1: “Puma”
  • Mac OS X Version 10.2: “Jaguar”
  • Mac OS X Version 10.3: “Panther”
  • Mac OS X Version 10.4: “Tiger”
  • Mac OS X Version 10.5: “Leopard”

You may leave a comment here if you are still having problems installing Shazam to your Mac OS X. Tell us why it is not working and the Shazam community here will reply to you as soon as possible.

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shazam

Shazam Online Free Version for Mac and PC

“What’s the name of this song?” This is a frequently asked question when a song flew through your ears. Often, you will forget about this song if there is no answer from your friends. But now, you can find out the name of a song within a minute as long as you have a Mac or PC that is connected to the internet and able to online. All you need is to access to Shazam online version and put your microphone close to the song or music you want to identify. Shazam will then recognize the song and tell you the name, artist, and return the full information to you including lyrics if it is available in the online database.

Wow! How much does it cost for such a wonderful application? It is FREE! Yes, Shazam is a free app for everyone. It is available in the Apple App Store as well as Google Play Store for free. Anyone who owns an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Nokia, Android device, Mac, or PC can download this app at zero cost. PC users can also download Shazam for PC and use it anytime on your Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows XP. As for Mac users, you can download Shazam from Mac App Store with just a click. Shazam Mac version works on an iMac, Mac mini, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and other Mac OS X devices perfectly. It works exactly as it should like on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

On the other hand, Shazam is also available online. Any Shazam members can access the online version and use the app for free without the need to install the software to a Mac or PC. Shazam online version is definitely perfect for people who do not prefer to download and install Shazam on their computer or desktop.

How to Use Shazam Online

It is extremely easy to use Shazam online version especially if you know how does Shazam work. There are two types of account – the free one and the premium one. The premium one comes with a lot extra features but the free version is already good enough for identifying little known songs by tags. In order to use Shazam online, you will need to access to its official website at Shazam.com from your Mac or PC. Log in to your account if you already have one otherwise you can register a new account using your Facebook account. Once the registration is done, click on the MY SHAZAM button on top and you will see all the functions and features there. Shazam online version allows you to find music by searching the artists, album, track, or all.

Shazam online

Shazam Online Alternatives

Without doubt, Shazam is undeniably one of the best music identifying software available on earth today. However, there are a few alternatives you can try online for free. The first one we would like to recommend is Midomi. Midomi is a music-identifying app that detects song though your Mac, PC, or mobile device’s microphone and display the information of the song. Midomi also links the song to iTunes store in its result and you can purchase the track right away. Often, Midomi gives you a 100% success rate when you try to identifying a song.

Midomi app
Midomi Screenshot

Musipedia is another great alternative to Shazam. It is a music search engine that allows you to search for an unknown song. Musipedia is definitely only one of its kind because it comes with online tools that allow you search a song by its melody or tune. Users can draw piano notes with a mouse or upload a melody to search for the song information. This is definitely a brilliant software for music lovers.

Musipedia
Musipedia Screenshot

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shazam

Shazam for PC: How to Download

Ladies and Gentlemen, we would like to proudly announce that Shazam for PC is now available after a long wait! Have you ever traveled in a car and hear the question “What is this song?” This is a commonly asked question in any situation that has music playing around. Often it is either someone asked you or you asked somebody. It will be disappointed if the answer is “I don’t know but I love the music”. In order to solve this problem, Shazam was founded. Shazam is an app to identify a music being played. In other words, Shazam answer your question by telling you the name of a song as well as the singer and lyrics. This is awesome isn’t?

Shazam has been in the market for a certain period and reportedly more than 50 million people are using it today. Thanks to the developers, it is now available on PC unofficially (Non Windows 8). For those who have been searching for a way to download and install Shazam for PC, you may follow the step by step guide below. Although the steps are a little bit complicated and tricky, do it slowly and you will sure get it installed on your PC.

Shazam for PC (Windows 8)

Shazam for Windows 8

The process to download Shazam is very straightforward if you are installing it on a personal computer or tablet that runs Windows 8. Simply go to this link at Shazam’s official website and hit the download button. It is absolutely free to download. You can then install Shazam within a minute from your PC. As for those who want to download Shazam to other Windows PC (Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS, and etc…), you may follow the tricky steps below.

Steps to download Shazam for PC

Shazam for pc
Step 1: First of all, download an Andriod emulator and install it to your PC. They can be BlueStacks, IntelAppUp, or YouWave. The choice is yours as all of them are available free online. BlueStacks is highly recommended as it works very well on Windows and Mac platform. It is easy to be installed and the installation process is very simple.

Step 2: Launch BlueStacks and you will see a very long search box in front of you. Ignore all the other icons because this is your first time using BlueStacks. Type “Shazam” into the search box and search for Shazam app.

bluestacks

Step 3: There will be more than one Shazam app appear – Shazam (Free), Shazam Encore, and Shazam RED. Go for the free version and click on it to install it.

Step 4: All it takes is less than a minute to install a free Shazam version. It may take a minute longer if your internet speed is slow. What now? Launch Shazam and use it on your PC!

How to install Shazam offline

There is a way to install Shazam on your PC if it can’t go online. Firstly, download a Shazam APK file from other computer or laptop that is able to connect to the internet. Copy and paste the Shazam APK file to your PC and run the installation. PS: This won’t work if you don’t have any Andriod emulator installed in your PC.

The above methods are three easiest way to get Shazam for PC. Please use the comment box below to leave a question if you have any otherwise leave a comment if you have a better way to download Shazam to a PC.

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shazam

How Does Shazam Work?

how does Shazam work

How Does Shazam Work? When one of the interviewers pops the question during a global mobile community meeting held in Tokyo last week, a brawl were created among developers. How does Shazam recognize a song from a tenth of a second to less than a minute? Apparently, this is something amazing and unbelievable although we are living in technological era. Developers scratched their head in order to find out Shazam’s algorithm. Let’s spend five minute to read this article if you are curious to find out the secret behind this awesome app.

What is Shazam?

Imagine that you are now sitting in a car with a few friends on your way to a party. The car radio is playing a nice song and one of your friends is asking for the name of the song. No one knows the song name and you usually forget the rhythm of the song afterwards. Back in the old days, the chances for us to recognize a song are very low. Just when you thought you knew the name of a song, you could be wrong! But today, this UK-founded Shazam could definitely help you. Shazam is a music-related app that is capable of identifying any kind of music. This app takes a few clicks and a few seconds to recognize a song that you put through the microphone of your mobile phone or tablets. It works awesome on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch and it brings on a heat wave in the iOS market since 2008. After rolling in the market for more than 10 years, Shazam app is frequently rated as the most valuable app of the decade.If you have not used Shazam before or it is installed in your device but never been used, you may want to juggle around with that.

How Does Shazam Work?

If Google is a collection of all websites in the world, Shazam is a library of all songs available on earth. According to a source from the internet, Shazam’s database has included more than 9 million songs. Each song is converted to a unique numeric code (fingerprint) and stored in a distinctive way using Shazam’s algorithm. Every time a song is played through the microphone of a device, Shazam converts this song into a numeric code (fingerprint) using the same algorithm and match the code from its database. It looks like it is a find and match algorithm, isn’t that sounds easy to understand? Wait a minute, this multi-million app has more for us to explore.

So, what is the algorithm that converts each of every song to a unique numeric code and how does it convert a song that so that no codes are the same. It sounds very hard to identify a song because there are too many different beats. According to Avery Li-Chun Wang’s research, one of the developers, the algorithm uses Spectrogram to store every song in its database. Spectrogram is a time versus frequency versus intensity graph. Two different songs may have a few similar frequencies but the intensity of these frequencies will not be the same and they won’t be appearing at the same specific time. If they do, they are the same song or same music.

Shazam spectrogram

The graph above is an example of a Spectrogram (Fig. 1A) and how the algorithm transfers it to a simpler Spectrogram (Fig. 1B), and then store it according to anchor point and target zone (Fig. 1C) using hash (Fig. 1D). This is an intelligent way of storing a data as it provides an efficient way for the algorithm to search for a match.

scatterplot

The graph above shows how a fingerprinted audio file is being used to match against other fingerprints from the database. Top graph shows an unmatched and bottom graph shows a match. If a music being played has noisy sound behind at the time a user hit the “tag now” button to run Shazam, an error message will appear because there is no match found. Otherwise, the song name, artist, and lyrics will be returned.

The future for Shazam

Shazam is one of the strongest leaders in its industry although it has some other competitors such as Soundhound. So far, Shazam works amazingly in many iOS devices and other Android devices. We understand that it still has some limitations because of the databases size. Will it be perfect if Shazam is able to identify any sound including animal’s voice?