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Geek Culture / How does song recognition work?

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Three Score
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Posted: 9th Jun 2007 08:43 Edited at: 9th Jun 2007 08:44
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I was using windows media player, and well I love how it automatically detects songs...now simple song recognition(even with distortion) I can see how it works...but I got a live album of a band and on it there was a single track that had like 10 pieces of songs..well, to make it easy to listen to it so I can listen to it easier(and learn it on guitar) I split the songs up with Acoustica...now this is where media player amazed me... media player somehow recognized the _live_ song as the original one on the album and it was cut to peices!...how the crap did this happen? It recognized liek 8 of the 10 songs! I find this jsut amazing..

how the crap does this work!?

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I'm addicted to placebo's...I would quit but it wouldn't mean anything! lol
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dark coder
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Posted: 9th Jun 2007 08:48
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Did you by chance name the songs in the meta data? because song recognition would probably take up a lot of bandwidth and time both of which I don't see the point of for an automated service.

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Three Score
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Posted: 9th Jun 2007 08:59
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no, I didn't....iirc anyway..(it was a while back I did this actually..)

Open86 --My Emulator (now with it's first super alpha release
I'm addicted to placebo's...I would quit but it wouldn't mean anything! lol
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Jess T
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Posted: 9th Jun 2007 09:31 Edited at: 9th Jun 2007 09:32
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If you named the files correctly, and the WMP database contains a unique listing of that same name, then that would be how it recognized it.

There's no way it would be doing wave-form checking since it would have to upload the entire song to the server, then run a check against all songs listed which is not only a computational nightmare, but most likely a legal one too.

[EDIT]
Personally, I've banned WMP from doing pretty much anything on my computer except play music and videos.
The only time I ever open it is when WinAMP can't play a file, or if I want to play two things at once, and that's only rare.
Why would I want MS to know what I'm listening to?
[/EDIT]

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 9th Jun 2007 12:36
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It is likely that a 1-5 second sample is sent to M$ of the first track. Either that, or an MD5 of the wave. Either way, it would need to be done at a low bitrate to be recognized quickly.


Since the other one was scaring you guys so much...
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GatorHex
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Posted: 9th Jun 2007 13:50 Edited at: 9th Jun 2007 15:34
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Maybe it uses something like the FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) algorithm to turn an analogue signal into a digital pattern that is easy to store and recognised. Similar to how speech recognition works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Fourier_transform

Had to use that on my MSc Java OOP course recently.

In the screenie below FFT recognises correctly that there are 4 distinct frequencies/amplitudes (50,100,150,200) in the sine wave even though they are combined and undecipherable to a human (ignore the scaling in the screenshot). You could store and recognise that pattern with only 8 floats, pretty cool!



That's what happens when they let Drs in Maths teach programming

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Jess T
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Posted: 9th Jun 2007 16:00
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Honestly, that's massive overkill.
All they need is either the file name, or the file name and any meta information (ID3 tags, for example), then they match them against their database to find out more information about it.

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RUCCUS
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Posted: 9th Jun 2007 19:25
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Well iPods been able to overcome the overhead, they have that new system for certain phones where if you hear a song you like, you let your phone "hear" the song and it'll find the actual song / download it. For a fee ofcourse.


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Jeku
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Posted: 9th Jun 2007 22:06
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Quote: "There's no way it would be doing wave-form checking since it would have to upload the entire song to the server, then run a check against all songs listed which is not only a computational nightmare, but most likely a legal one too."


Actually, in Japan they've had the tech for years. With some of their cellphones, if you record a few seconds of music from the radio or somesuch, it will query a server somewhere and then tell you the name of the song that was playing.

I believe it does use fast fourier transform as GatorHex suggested. This tech is coming to North America soon, if it hasn't already.

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ionstream
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Posted: 9th Jun 2007 22:51
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They don't use any ID3 tags or META tags, that doesn't make sense. I think it wasverizon that released a device that you put close to a speaker and it finds out what song it is. I have to say, this service is pretty awesome! Now I don't have to ask those friends "hey, what was that song that goes DO do dod doooooooo do DAH DAH DOOO?"

That's not as bad as you think you said.
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Josh
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Posted: 9th Jun 2007 22:53
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@ Jess:

haha yeah Winamp all the way!


@ Three Score:

If you really want to know _how_ the comparison works, study some wave behaviour physics.

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Eric T
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Posted: 9th Jun 2007 23:03
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It's definitely not wave checking. It checks the tags and file name in it's database.

Not really that advanced.

http://blog.myspace.com/erict
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Josh
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Posted: 9th Jun 2007 23:28
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True, this is MS we're talking about after all!

Someone could always try it by stripping all the ID3 tags from a song and playing it in WMP..

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Eric T
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Posted: 9th Jun 2007 23:32
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Already done it several times.

Strip ALL tags, keep the encoding exactly the same, change the file name to "No Artist - No Song Title" or something similar, and it won't pick it up.

http://blog.myspace.com/erict
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Jeku
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Posted: 9th Jun 2007 23:46
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@Eric T - There is technology, like was stated, that can analyze the sound and determine the song. Not sure if this is what WMP does or not, but the technology exists and has already been implemented in several cell phone brands.

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Eric T
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Posted: 9th Jun 2007 23:57
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Oh, the technology exists... It's not implemented in WMP though. Possibly the next version, now that the technology is being worked on much.

Though, if you have seen one of those cell phones, it is often it won't pick up a song due to its limited database. Most metal and electronica, for instance, will not be recognized. Whats popular on the charts, of course, will be.

http://blog.myspace.com/erict
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dab
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Posted: 10th Jun 2007 02:49
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There is one that will match it with humming.

http://hsearch.nayio.com/
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Jess T
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Posted: 10th Jun 2007 06:41
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Didn't know about that technology (knew it could be done, didn't know it was implimented), but still, my point stands that WMP doesn't do it

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