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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.
*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.