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How Google's Pixel 2 'Now Playing' Song Identification Works (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report from VentureBeat, written by Emil Protalinski: The most interesting Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL feature, to me, is Now Playing. If you've ever used Shazam or SoundHound, you probably understand the basics: The app uses your device's microphone to capture an audio sample and creates an acoustic fingerprint to compare against a central song database. If a match is found, information such as the song title and artist are sent back to the user. Now Playing achieves this with two important differentiators. First, Now Playing detects songs automatically without you explicitly asking -- the feature works when your phone is locked and the information is displayed on the Pixel 2's lock screen (you'll eventually be able to ask Google Assistant what's currently playing, but not yet). Secondly, it's an on-device and local feature: Now Playing functions completely offline (we tested this, and indeed it works with mobile data and Wi-Fi turned off). No audio is ever sent to Google.
Yet another lump of unremovable pre-installed stuff taking precious space on your phone.
How in the actual fuck is this possible? They have an audio an audio signature of every song built in?
"The Pixel 2’s on-device database for Now Playing is based on Google Play Music’s top songs, the Google spokesperson revealed. Google wouldn’t share the exact number of songs in the database, but the spokesperson did note it’s in the high 10s of thousand"
So it's only top songs, and only a limited number.
Aren't these things meant to have high numbers of songs so that you can find out what that obscure song is, not just the latest taylor swift one?
Good for you, Emil Protalinski. You're probably a boring person, but great at pop culture.
So it knows every song played in the gym, why can't it be used to _tune out_ that song playing right now with my noise-supressing headphones, since it knows every tone in advance and hasn't to guess?
Then I could hear _my_ music playing in my headphones.
Would also be great for the barmen in nightclubs and other places playing loud music.
I'll bet Google Pixel 2 won't be able to identify the songs on my playlist.
https://youtu.be/99KkbFjZR20
You are welcome on my lawn.
so it's not using online services to perform this... but when you do connect I'll bet it sends data somewhere about what it heard, thereby enabling google to suggest music you may like from their various partners
Who really cares about how this is done. I'm much more interested in what the battery impact of such a useless feature is. Seriously, how often do most people use this feature, such that it would be useful having this run 24/7/365?
Just don't turn it on if you care that much. It isn't on by default.
Bollocks. It's all on the device?... no wi-fi... no 4G... 16GB... My fat arse!
the CIA intercepts it.
I'm much more interested in what the battery impact of such a useless feature is.
It's unlikely to move the needle.
Songs usually last for a solid 2-3 minutes, so that limits the processing to maybe 500 analysis per day. That's basically like doing 500 searches per day, on fast storage (probably cached), probably using some kind of vsm or inverted index, or maybe a radix tree. Minimal cpu usage, minimal i/o, no gpu usage. I suspect the weather apps is more harmful for the battery than this kind of thing because it involves the network stack.
lucm, indeed.
yet, the actual results database is so bad, that shazam and google both fail to identify most of the jazz songs I try with their service.
now I just record in whatsapp and send to a music friend who reply not only with the correct track but a few similar suggestions.
screw ai.
Pareto principle, amigo. Pop, hip-hop and country will always take the bulk of the market, and therefore the bulk of the attention of this kind of tool.
But instead of seeing this as a problem, maybe you should see it as an opportunity. You probably have a huge collection of the kind of music you like; you coud build specialized models and sell them. Or even better, create a specialized shazam-like app where people can purchase those additional models, and you'll make good money, then Google will buy you out.
lucm, indeed.
I suppose this feature might be of intense interest to some, of casual interest to others, but many, such as myself, ask, "This is on my phone why?
Making phone calls on a phone has long ago become a secondary, even a tertiary, feature.
I'm guessing this will eventually be used to block the playing of any song that doesn't have an approved origin.
Perhaps, but then we won't buy such phones!
Yes. Yes it has, and it will never be a primary feature again. Get over it. Complaining about it every time makes you look like an idiot at best, or like the Local Man Who Never Watches TV and Doesn't Even Own A TV at worst.
*facepalm*
You act as though everyone is only going to listen to full songs of exactly 2-3 minutes when in reality people will be listening to song fragments and jumping from track to track at any time. It's not like it's going to recognise a song and then magically read the minds of the listener to know how long to turn off until the song gets changed. It will have to continuously monitor, 24/7.
No audio is ever sent to Google.
No. But the playlist along with location data probably is. Either in real time or forwarded when the network becomes available.
And then this is turned over to ASCAP/BMI to verify that commercial establishments you were in have paid their fees.
Have gnu, will travel.
Totally bogus. I actually tried this and found out it is a set-up for spam.
As you say, it can't use a canned MP3 to generate a noise cancelling waveform... but since the device is listening and can compare the acoustic properties to the reference master, it should be able to make a mapping that could get pretty close.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There are enough real reasons to hate Google, that one doesn't need to fabricate false ones. Those of us that don't like Google have even more motivation to call out bullshit complaints than fanboys, because fake problems desensitize people to real problems, often then thinking all complains come from opposing fanboys.
*facepalm*
You act as though everyone is only going to listen to full songs of exactly 2-3 minutes when in reality people will be listening to song fragments and jumping from track to track at any time.
Before facepalming people, maybe you should RTFA. The service they describe is not for someone actively listening to music, it's to detect automatically whatever is playing in the background. For instance, when you're at Starbucks.
I'm not a fan of Google usually but this is a pretty interesting feature. Shazam is cool but most of the time when I hear a song that I like, my interest doesn't go as far as actually unlocking the phone and starting the app. But glancing at the lockscreen and seeing what is playing in the background, that I would do for sure, and it would add just a little bit to my quality of life.
And it's not just for good songs. For instance, the other day I heard a song in Spanish by a duo that included someone who clearly doesn't speak Spanish. I had to look it up because I found it annoying, and I realized it was Justin Bieber and Daddy Yankee (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK-RJiYKBYw). With things like this "playing now" gadget, I would have known immediately and it would have fueled my dislike of that Bieber person without forcing me to do anything other than own a decent smartphone.
lucm, indeed.
But then pre-packages the information to be sent surreptiously with your daily or weekly Google report.
I dunno what people find so useful in assistants, crap like this, plus embedded AI to identify objects when you are taking photos and whatnot, but I see it as overengineering stuff and offering little to no convenience (when not actually making things even harder to do) while using you as testbed for future data collection schemes and whatnot.
This function in particular can only go both ways: either collect the data to send later and use it to sell more music to you, or as some future implementation of DRM that we're simply not quite aware of. It's giving more vain justifications for people to get used to the idea of having always on listening devices. We're not long from getting to a point where no one can know for sure if they are getting recorded all the time because a personal device, or devices of other people around you might have an always listening function in it recording everything. This is the type of future we're walking towards because people are blindly following shitty trends mandated by these corporations.
It's not just a bug.. it's a feature!
Google, Samsung, Apple... all their phones can now do pretty much everything their customers need, and are powerful enough where there’s not much practical gain in upgrading. These companies are basically stuck trying to sell us high priced gadgets which in truth are pretty much commodities now.
This new feature from Google doesn’t seem useful to me at all. But, given the choice between a phone able to do this and a phone which can turn me into an animated, talking poop emoji... I’d take this, thank you very much.
#DeleteChrome
My phone said it closed Firefox and Here maps to save power.... but I haven't run these for days.
IMPLEMENT A FOOKING CLOSE APP FEATURE, FFS.
Why are these apps even hanging around once I've finished with them. The choice to keep apps running and only close them when Android thinks they should be closed WAS LOST WITH v5. Prior to v5, apps would be gracefully packed away, after v5 you made the assumption that apps would/could save their state completely and restore it and forcibly wiped background apps from memory regardless of state when you chose.
These choices were dumb. Apps cannot restore server connections or completely restore the state every time, which is why people them force kept the app open to prevent you closing it randomly.
You then compounded this fooking dumb choice, with these 'power saving' things. Stupid features which even close MP3 players when the screen is off.
How about you step back and do this properly.
Apps are closed by the user when the USER is finished with them. You don't randomly close stuff and apps don't need special permissions or steps to stop you randomly closing them.
Is it so hard? Firefox and Here should not be running when I've done with them, there should be a proper close. You don't need to fix this shit you created with more shit.
At the moment you cannot make software reliably run on Android because of the OS. Only mini-apps can reliably use it. Everything else needs to register a special notification (to say its running, WTF...) or they will be closed at random in their run cycle.
Backtrack on this dumb "no close needed" idea. It's had its day.
So everyone knows there exist several shazam-like apps and services that will identify a song that's playing. I have personally used this service maybe two times within the past four years. The 500MB of storage space wasted on the Now Playing data base is just not worth it..
Google Assistant / Now has been doing it for years too. You know, the core of the platform your talking about
What a shame that MP3s are so huge and complex that Google has a storage and indexing capacity problem
What a shame that you didn't RTFA and missed the part where they explain that it works while the device is not connected to internet
lucm, indeed.
"This is on my phone why?
"
Because you installed it by mistake and are too silly to remove it?
Because you needed something to complain about?
Can you tell us? Why did you put it on your phone?
If you want a phone that's just a phone, you can still buy one very cheaply. If you want a 1440p-display pocket computer with an OLED screen and an always-on connection to the Internet, the phone part is basically free.
Thatâ(TM)s is the only thing you do with your phone that isnâ(TM)t sent to the mother roach.
Offline in the Apple sense, I'm sure, where the mobile/WiFi indicators say that they're off but are still fully operational. Try it after removing the SIM and forgetting all WiFi networks.
OK, so maybe it doesn't do it offline. But who cares? I can already ask my Moto G "What song is this?" It listens, and tells me what's playing. I've used it numerous times, and it got it right every time!
better than Facebook.
Just correlate who are listening the same songs over 10-20 mins and they know who are travelling together.
Big brother just got bigger, and NSA/FBI just got another mountain of "associations" they can mine.
"No audio is ever sent to Google."
The evidence doesn't support that claim.
Why is this even a feature? if I put it on my device, I likely know the artist and album. If it's playing from an online service, they know the album and artist. Or, is having the microphone on all the time the real feature?
Perhaps a silly question, but if it is now possible for a phone identify a song based off a short random sample, is it possible for to scan all locally-stored content and/or linked content for infringing material? How about a man-in-the-middle looking at network traffic?
It isn't optionally put on the phone, it is put there by Google and requires rooting the phone to get rid of it.
And to the person who said I should stop complaining about smartphones, I was making an observation. There's a difference. If it came across as a complaint, then I could have expressed it better.
It’s worth noting that Now Playing is turned off by default. You have to explicitly turn it on in the setup flow when first starting your Pixel 2 or Pixel 2 XL, or in Settings (as shown above).