If anything it's gotten even more magical. I was blown away when I tried to find the song someone was singing on America’s Got Talent and the result it returned was the singer on AGT (they index tv shows!?).
Your TV is actually actively “shazaming” everything you watch. That’s one way ads are attributed to you. TV manufacturers sell that data, that’s one of the reasons TVs are so cheap now - the ad view data is the real money.
I haven’t seen a commercial in quite a long time, but for a while many years ago, Shazam was being used like an audio QR code. Commercials would tell you to use Shazam on their ad to get a deal or something. My guess is after Apple bought Shazam they stopped needing to do stuff like that to monetize.
Ah, I thought they did this to know what people are watching. Yes... see here:
> Alphonso's software uses the same technology that Shazam and similar services employ to automatically detect the song you're listening to. It samples small bits of audio, creating a digital "fingerprint" of it, and comparing it against a a database on their server to identify the show or movie. In fact, Alphonso's CEO says they have a deal with Shazam, and use their specific technology to do this. But this embedded software can even be listening even when your phone's screen is turned off and it's ostensibly idle.
I worked at Alphonso, and yes their tech also used small fingerprints made of small bits of audios. But they primarily used it in TV's to figure out what ads people are watching and then used that data for retargeting users on digital platforms.
