Google launches Now Playing function to compete with Apple’s newly-acquired Shazam

Since this birth of the iPhone, Shazam has been the dominant music recognition software for smart phone devices. Perhaps that’s why Apple attempted to purchase the company back in 2017 for $400 million — although to much resistance. Now that an official EU investigation has ruled that the merger does not violate anti-trust laws, Apple is sitting pretty at it’s $1 trillion valuation.

In response to Apple’s unbridled success, competitors like Google are attempting to up the ante on a few of their own device features. On Friday, the Palo Alto-based rival tech giant announced an updated music recognition software that has integrated Google’s Sound Search function on the Android into what they’re calling Now Playing. The software’s goal is to more quickly and accurately match songs, although Google reveals that it’s working to improve the app’s vitality.

“We still think there’s room for improvement though — we don’t always match when music is very quiet or in very noisy environments, and we believe we can make the system even faster,” Google said over their blog. “We are continuing to work on these challenges with the goal of providing the next generation in music recognition.”

Sound Search is a server-side system and won’t constrained by a device’s storage or processing capacity, which greatly improves the viability of voice matching against their growing library of tens of millions of songs.

To start the software, start a voice query. If there’s music playing nearby, the app will ask, “What’s this song?” Or users can simply ask, “Hey Google, what’s this song?”

Sound Search works on Google’s Search app, Google Assistant, and any Pixel or Android phone.

Source: CNET