HOW BIG IS SHAZAM?

THE UNSUNG HERO OF MUSIC LOVERS

- Words By: Sandesh Bhosle

You're at a café, sipping on your favorite coffee, and a song starts playing in the background. The melody is infectious, but the name of the track is frustratingly out of reach. You hum a few bars, trying to recall the lyrics, but nothing clicks. Just as you're about to give up, you pull out your phone, tap an app, and within seconds, bam! The song's name, artist, and album appear on your screen.

That app is Shazam, and it has been solving musical mysteries for over two decades. It started as a call-in music recognition service, and its journey over the last two decades is a testament to technological innovation, persistence, and an unrelenting passion for music. Let's take a deep dive into how a simple idea turned into one of the most influential music discovery tools in the world.

EARLY STRUGGLES

The story of Shazam began in 1999 when four young entrepreneurs - Chris Barton, Philip Inghelbrecht, Dhiraj Mukherjee, and Avery Wang, decided to tackle a challenge that seemed impossible at the time. They envisioned a service that could identify a song simply by 'listening' to it. The idea was groundbreaking, especially in an era when smartphones didn't exist, and internet connectivity was still in its early stages. Avery Wang, the brains behind the technology, developed a unique algorithm capable of recognising songs from short audio clips. The algorithm created digital fingerprints of audio signals, which could then be matched against a database of songs.