Shazam Plans To Add Object Recognition To Service

In case you've managed to go all these years without hearing about it, Shazam is a service that allows users to play part of a song or TV show and discover what it is, as well as more about it and buy the content if desired. It comes in handy when you catch a fun song halfway through on the radio, and now the company wants to expand that core functionality to include object recognition. With that feature, it would work the same, only swapping out the audio content for a physical object someone might want to learn more about.

With Shazam the way it currently is, users hold their phone up close to the source of whatever audio is of interest. The app listens for a few seconds, then processes what it hears and presents all the related information about it: who made it, what it's from, and more. The object recognition, though not yet available, will work in the same way, though with the device's camera rather than microphone.

The news came earlier today from Reuters, which got it from Shazam's chief executive Rich Riley. "We want to expand the universe of what you can Shazam," he said. That doesn't mean the audio deciphering functionality would go away, of course, just that more could be learned using that same small blue button.

Shazam currently boasts about 100 million users and 250 workers, both of which it is looking to increase. To give an example of this future functionality, it would include something like searching for information related to a box of cereal and getting its nutritional info as a result. When this service is set to launch wasn't stated.

SOURCE: Reuters