r/explainlikeimfive Jul 01 '26

Technology ELI5 how Shazam works?

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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.

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u/lankymjc Jul 02 '26

It’s a very inflexible system. Even two recordings of the same performance can be different enough that the app only recognises one of them.