Product in Focus: Shazam
Product in Focus is a series to acknowledge some great products available to us and what improvements or features could be added to them to make them even better.
The fourth application in this series is Shazam.
The app has made it simpler to identify the music playing around you, especially when you can’t get that catchy reel music you listened to on Instagram out of your head, or can’t put your finger on the music you just heard while passing by a store in the mall.
It basically provides that instant gratification to the age-old question — “What Song is that?”.
To emphasize, Shazam is an application that can identify music, movies, advertising, and television shows, based on a short sample played and using the microphone on the device. It was created by London-based Shazam Entertainment, and has been owned by Apple Inc. It boasts of 200 million+ monthly active users worldwide and Apple products have been deeply benefitting from deeper integration with Shazam three years on from with the company’s buyout.
I have been using this app for quite some time and I am absolutely convinced it has made me come across some absolutely amazing music and have helped me build my playlists.
However, being an ardent user of this application, I always have felt that there could be some improvements and features that could be added to this product to make the user experience better and more fulfilling.
Before proceeding, I must mention, I am not affiliated with Shazam in any capacity, and the views for this article are strictly my own.
What it does best?
- Identifying any song
The most obvious feature, identifying any song in the world. And when I say world, yes it has identified songs for me in totally different languages as well (Kdramas OST especially). The best part is either the music is playing somewhere else, or on your phone, or even when the headphones are plugged in, it identifies the correct song with a single tap even if you just listened to a lofi, remixed version of a song.
2. In-app library
What happens to all the songs you have identified over the years through Shazam, and probably forgot about them but got the sudden urge to listen to them again? Worry not, because Shazam remembers all the songs identified in the form of Library.
3. Redirection to other apps
I assume Shazam has partnered with Apple Music (since it is owned by Apple Inc) and Youtube, since after identifying a song, it provides other details such as lyrics, artists’ details, Youtube’s link to the video, and Apple’s Music link to play the entire song. Additionally, a user can play some seconds of the song inside the app itself.
How can it be improved?
- Importing libraries as playlists
We as users not only need just Spotify/Apple Music links for the songs we Shazamed, we users would love to have the libraries we have created on Shazam by identifying hundreds of songs over the years, as playlists in our favourite music streaming app.
A feature, wherein the library could keep updating the songs as a “My Shazam Tracks” in the music streaming app you have connected your Shazam account with as we keep on looking for newer songs, would definitely be a blessing in disguise.
The motivation behind identifying a particular song through Shazam is that users can listen to it again. If that is done automatically in the music streaming app, it could save a lot of time and effort of finding that particular song in your music app.
2. Consecutive Listening
There are times when we are hearing songs on radio while driving, or are scrolling through Instagram reels back to back, when we come across multiple songs consecutively that we don’t identify.
For solving such a pain point, a new feature could be introduced of setting a timer or activating the app in the background so that it can keep identifying the songs back to back until it is asked to stop.
3. Identifying songs through humming/singing
There are times when we have a song struck in our head, and it won’t leave, no matter how hard we try and we want to know more about it. At present, Shazam is capable to identify music which is being played somewhere, however cannot identify if we are humming a tune, perhaps. Granted, this is a kind of feature which can be a hit or miss in searching for the right song, but I am sure the users would be happy if such a feature is introduced in the app.
All said and done, it is imperative to understand that critiquing a product from the outside is an easy venture. Due credit is obviously owed to the talented minds behind the scenes who have made the Shazam app this successful.
Any suggestions on improving my approach and if I missed anything in the entire process are most welcome.
