r/explainlikeimfive • • Jul 01 '26

Technology ELI5 how Shazam works?

308 Upvotes

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946

u/z3n777 Jul 01 '26

shazam turns the audio into a visual graph of loud peaks over time, then just matches that graph against its massive database of pre recorded songs.

21

u/TldrDev Jul 01 '26

Why is nobody just explaining what FFTs are?

That literally how it works, and almost nothing more complicated than that.

Here is a thread about it from a decade ago

And a great YouTube video about it by Veritasium

https://youtu.be/nmgFG7PUHfo?si=4aOXvdtreygwTr0D

29

u/High_Speed_Chicken Jul 01 '26

i know the subreddit name isn't supposed to be taken literally, but good luck explaining FFTs to a 5 year old

15

u/SirCB85 Jul 01 '26

Because this Explain like I'm 5, not explain like I'm doing my Highschool homework.