Identify music & add to playlists

Use Shazam — and Apple Music — to recognize a tune and do plenty more

WE LOVE SHAZAM almost as much as trivia night quizmasters hate it; it can automagically tell you what song is playing after listening to just a few seconds of it. That makes it a menace if your rival quiz team is using it to cheat during a music round, but it’s helped us discover and fall in love with some of our favorite artists. If you can hear it clearly, Shazam can usually tell you exactly what it is.

Since Apple bought Shazam, it’s been integrated tightly with the Music app and with Siri on your iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. That makes it even more useful — as we’ll discover, you can get it to automatically add recognized songs to your Apple Music playlist.

Shazam used to be a standalone service, and it’s still available as a standalone app; we’d recommend installing that as it enables some useful features.

SONIC FINGERPRINT

The clever tech behind Shazam may seem like magic, but of course there are some limits on what it can do. It works by creating a kind of sonic fingerprint and comparing it to a massive database of existing music. If a song or a version of a song isn’t in the database, Shazam won’t be able to recognize it —so, as a rule of thumb, if the track isn’t in Apple Music, then it may well stump Shazam too. And sadly you can’t Shazam songs that you sing or hum. For that, try out the SoundHound —Music Discovery app www.soundhound.com) on iOS.

HOW TO Make the most of Shazam and Apple Music 

When you want to find out what a song is, ask Siri “what song is playing?” If your iPhone is locked, you’ll see a pop–up showing a waveform and the “Listening…” status. You must have Wi–Fi or mobile data on for Shazam to work.

When Shazam has recognized the song — a process that takes a few seconds — the notification will show you the name of the song, the name of the artist and a thumbnail of the artwork. Tap on the notification to see the options available.

Shazam integrates tightly wit