- Spotify is reportedly launching its own song ID tool
- Changes to the Android app were detected with references to ‘Identify a song’, ‘listening’ and ‘analyzing’
- It can add a level of convenience when adding identified songs to a playlist, much like Apple Music’s Shazam shortcut
There’s one thing that Spotify has over Apple Music and that’s music discovery features, although the latter service has the edge when it comes to music recognition – but that could all change soon.
In a recent investigation by Android Authority, the outlet found lines of code in the latest version of the Spotify app that suggest the platform is working on its own song identification feature. While this has only been found in Spotify’s Android app, we wouldn’t rule out the possibility of it launching on iOS.
As with all rumors, we’ll take this with a grain of salt until more information emerges, but Android Authority’s findings present some pretty compelling evidence, showing text that reads ‘Identify a song’, ‘listen’ and ‘analyze’. It seems that the feature needs to access your device’s microphone and will show pop-ups when a song cannot be identified.
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Basically, it sounds like Spotify is developing its own in-house version of Shazam, which could act as a Band-Aid for many music fans out there who, like myself, rely on third-party music recognition software to title songs.
When Apple acquired Shazam in 2018, it pushed the music recognition platform directly into the iOS experience. Instead of having to use the standalone Shazam app, you can add the ‘Recognize Music’ tab to your iOS Control Center for easier access and Shazam will be right at your fingertips.
It also works wonders for quickly adding songs to your Apple Music library. When you Shazam a song, a pop-up window appears that says “Add to Apple Music?” will appear and all your tracks will be sent to your library. Until now, this level of convenience was not available to Spotify users.
Since Apple took ownership of Shazam, Apple Music and its users have benefited greatly, but listeners using Spotify, Tidal and the rest of the top music streaming services have been missing out. All was not lost, however; last year Shazam launched a feature where every song you identified using the app was automatically added to a special playlist on your Spotify account titled ‘My Shazam Tracks’.
I have to say that this small but effective feature has become one of my most used tools for keeping track of new music, but if you Shazam quite a few songs from different genres, it creates a very messy looking playlist.
Even after my Shazamed songs are added to ‘My Shazam Tracks’, I still go back to the playlist to individually move songs to my other playlists – which is why a built-in Spotify song ID tool would go a long way, and it would be even better if you could add it to your iOS Control Center.
Just think about it: you’re out driving and a song starts playing that you know you’ve definitely heard before, but can’t for the life of you remember what it’s called or who sings it. A simple swipe down to the control center and a press of a button gives you the song title in seconds and then it directs you to your Spotify library where you can add your newly discovered song to a specific playlist.
We’ve contacted Spotify for comment, who responded with the following:
“We are always exploring ways to improve our product and deliver more value to users, but we do not comment on speculation about possible new features and have nothing new to share at this time”.
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