Hacker News Reader

Comment by theDoug | Hacker News Reader

This "feature not a product" belief only makes sense if you pretend that the product doesn't provide the answer sought by its primary user and as byproduct produces a truly real-time stream/map of what music-enjoying people are interested in finding out more about.

This data would be incredibly valuable to companies trying to market and sell music. Like labels, and now, Apple. Not to mention keeping that data now out of the hands of others.

View on HN

I mean a feature in a sense that it seems (although I assume I wrong and thus am asking) like something that one uses extremely rarely and offers limited utility. I have used Shazam a few times, and each time quickly install, use it, and remove it. I would have used it more if I could just ask Siri or Ok Google what a song was.

There is another reply to me that snarkily opines that the average HNer doesn't engage in social events, which is a bit humorous really because a more correct statement is that most people are socializing at social events, not doing inference on background music. I can say that I have never, ever seen another person pull out shazam in public.

You can ask Siri what the song is. One UI flaw is that music app is open or playing on your phone, she will name the active track. Otherwise, she will say ‘Listening...’ and then identify the song and artist, I think with iTunes links (or course!).

>This "feature not a product" belief only makes sense if you pretend that the product doesn't provide the answer sought by its primary user

It also makes sense if the scope of the product is not enough for it to make anyone pay for it (except as part of a larger product).

People don't pay for social networks either.

And you give away privacy as a result.

Social networks have a big enough scope to make money otherwise (you're literally using them for hours on end every day).

That's not the case for an app you might take out a couple of times a day (at best) to check some tune for 10 seconds.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com