The New York Times On The Invisible Magic Of Shazam

If you’ve ever heard a snatch of a catchy song on television or in a bar and wondered what it was enough to pull out your iPhone, you’re probably familiar with music-identifying services like Shazam which record a snippet of music and then try to identify the artist, album and title against the information in its database.

Ever wonder, though, how Shazam gets all of its data? Intriguingly, it doesn’t all just get pumped in from the labels. Instead, Shazam employs a constabulary of music detectives who not only track down on-the-rise tracks and artists, but also actively search out new tracks to index, implement and program into their data frames.

A fantastic piece explaining how one of iOS’s most casually impressive apps is driven by the invisible magic of human ingenuity.

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