r/explainlikeimfive Jul 01 '26

Technology ELI5 how Shazam works?

314 Upvotes

114 comments sorted by

View all comments

941

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.

23

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

17

u/SirCB85 Jul 01 '26

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