Shazam has long been the savior of your happy hour dignity by helping you sneakily figure out what song is playing without having to ask the hip bartender. Now those audio recognition powers are coming to your Mac.
Available early this morning, Shazam for Mac works almost exactly like the Auto Shazam that's already available on the familiar mobile apps. It listens continuously to system audio and your Mac's built-in mics for samples and tries to match them to its database of songs, TV shows, and TV ads. If it finds a match, you can click through from a drop down list on your taskbar and learn more about what you're listening to or watching. In the case of TV shows like The Bachelorette, that means links to IMDB profiles and Wikipedia articles. For songs, it's iTunes buy links and lyrics. What are the lyrics to "Roxanne," anyway?
I tried out the new app in advance of the announcement, and the built-in mics caught exactly the same tags as the mobile app. With my headphones plugged in the service wasn't nearly as effective, but we can hope that'll improve in future iterations. Additionally, the company says it'll be building in links to streaming services like Spotify and Rdio in the very near future as well.
Why would you want this? From Shazam's point of view, it's missing out on a huge opportunity in all the time you're spending on your computer watching YouTube videos at home and at work. To your benefit, Shazam for Mac can serve as a Last.FM like record of everything you've heard on your computer.
Shazam has been an amazing tool since it launched and having it in more places can only be a good thing. Because who isn't sitting in front of their TV on their Mac most of the time, amirite? [Shazam]