If you want to know the name of a song, you use Shazam, which is integrated as standard on your iPhone. However, iOS also has a function to find all songs ever requested from the Shazam music recognition. That’s how it works.
Look up songs via Shazam
How often does it happen that you come across a nice song somewhere. Maybe it’s a cool song just before your favorite artist’s concert starts. Or there is a radio playing in the office and there is something fun about it. Thanks to the Shazam integration on your iPhone, you just have to ask Siri what song it is, or use the dedicated Shazam button in your control center (if necessary, add the control directly from the control center).
Shazam (or Siri via Shazam) will listen for a moment and then let you know which song is being played. However, if you don’t immediately add the song to your Spotify or Apple Music library, you will forget it just as quickly as you found it. Fortunately, there is an option to open the history of all requested numbers. And that’s how it works.
Find old songs Shazam music recognition
To find old songs, you initially follow the same route as when you want to search for a song, namely you open the control panel. However, after that it immediately works differently. iPhoned explains it in a step-by-step plan:
- Open the control panel with a swipe from top right to bottom;
- Tap and hold your finger on the Shazam controller until a menu appears;
- Choose ‘History’. You will now end up in a so-called AppClip from Shazam;
- Scroll down here for an overview of all the songs you have ever looked up;
- If you tap on a song, you will receive additional information, as well as a link to Apple Music.
Using the button with the three dots on the details page, it is even possible to immediately add a song to a playlist on Apple Music. Do you use Spotify? The integration with this music streaming service is a lot worse. Actually you only have one option, and that is to search manually by title.
This is how Shazam works
But how does Shazam actually work in practice? When you open Shazam or press the recognition button in your console, your iPhone listens to the clip and compares the sound information against a huge database of music tracks. Within seconds you will see the song name, artist and album cover. Shazam works with almost all sound sources – there are even people who claim they could hum a song and have it recognized. We have that iPhoned haven’t managed to do it yet, but luckily there is an alternative app for that.
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