Summary
The author has been using
Shazam since 2015 or 2016, and discovered it after purchasing a smartphone in
2017. They conducted research trips to SEA, recording high-quality music from
Chinese Cantonese, Malaysian Hindi, Thai, and Tamil. They identified 10 Hindi
songs out of 11 and 43 Chinese songs out of 57. They also used a smaller
collection of 52 songs to test Shazam's performance with newer songs, finding
19 unidentified songs out of 49 with 66% success.
The text describes a
report on Shazam on 2000 Singapore, focusing on poor FM listening conditions
and results. The author notes that over 50% of recordings were unsuitable for
listening and a few were completely unusable. The report includes 189 mp3 recordings,
with 72 identified (40%) and 57 known as singers or songs (31%). The author
also mentions a test conducted on 23 using Spore and Klasik FM Malaysia, with a
total of eight songs played. The text concludes that most songs from that era
are played on Klassik or other streaming stations, with the few unIDed or
unshazamed songs being uninteresting.
Full TEXT
Older Music 1989
Shazam is a program that I have known for a
long time, since around 2015 or 2016, although I started using it after 2018 or
2019. I have a keen interest in finding and identifying Malaysian music, and I
discovered the program shortly after purchasing my second smartphone, the Redmi
5A, at the end of 2017. Shazam was one of the first programs that I added and
connected to my Google account.
Soon after testing the 1989 collection, I
conducted my first research trip to SEA for both business and to record a
series of 7 C90 cassettes in HK, Bangkok, Singapore, and Phuket. These
locations provided a unique opportunity to listen to high-quality music,
including Chinese Cantonese, Malaysian Hindi, Thai, and Tamil music. Although
much of the music was similar to Western standards, it was still very
enjoyable.
I continue by copy pasting my results from my
canceled book due to the very low input of orders, it seems that people prefer to be freebies than support a writer:
My results are as follows:
·
10
IDed Hindi songs out of 11 (91% success the remain also well known)
·
43
IDed Chinese songs out of 57 (75%)
·
29
IDed Thai songs out of 64 (44%)
·
14
IDed Malay out of 36 (39%)
·
In
HK: 5 IDed and 2 not
·
2
false results!
(IDed = identified)
Seven songs have been excluded from the list,
including three Chinese, two Thai, and three Malay. These songs were included in albums
purchased at the same time. The Malay albums were purchased later, but before
2000.
Part 2 collection from a friend on
97
Back in the early days of the
internet, I communicated with several Malay people around the world. One of
them sent me a few C90 tapes with music recorded from FM radio in Singapore, if
I'm not mistaken. These tapes were incredibly important to me and I played them
so many times that if they were on a CD player, it would be completely worn out
due to overuse!
The tape was later converted to MP3
and stored in a CD bag with other collections. It was also played on an MP3
player multiple times.
After checking my first music
collection of 89 songs with Shazam, I used this smaller collection of around 52
songs to test if and how Shazam performs better with newer songs. This
experiment was conducted as the previous one had little success with Malay
music.
The cassettes contain 19 songs from
singer collections and 33 songs from radio. One of them is in English
(Braxton's 'Unbreak My Heart' rated '6'). Less than 20 songs are required for
identification of these 52 songs. There was one false result, but it was
corrected after replaying.
Here are the results :
Two songs are in double / one mix-up
with 4 songs measured each one separately
- 19 unIDed out of 49 Rating
= 66% success , higher than the 89 collection
- 8 of these unIDed known to
me 3-4 are hits of the time .
- 8 mutually unknown
- 1 singer (4 songs) out of 3 missing in full .
- 6 new titles from Shazam
from my previously missing titles
Shazam on 2000 Singapore only
I am maintaining the same format as
the 89 report, although the emotional ratings and technical information are now
shown less. The reason for this will be explained below.
The FM listening conditions and
results were quite poor. At one point, Singapore's FM band was congested with
radio stations, many of which had strong signals. This caused cross-station
interference and mysterious cracking sounds that sometimes severely deteriorated
reception, as heard in the recordings.
It has been a long time since I made
these recordings, so everything may have been lost to time or deleted from any
listings used to record the music. If you were near me, you would surely laugh
at me using two tape recorders at the same time, with one earbud struggling to
listen to the start and end of each song so that I could start or stop the
recording. The only thing I can remember was when Klassik National identified
and played a well-known ballad rock song from the past.
More than 50% of the recordings were
unsuitable for listening, and a few were completely unusable. I rarely use it
for listening because the sound is annoying.
Short recordings were made on around
10 tapes over the course of three days. Is this a Guinness record?
Total mp3: 189 minus 9 'snippets'
(short rippings )
· 72
of them IDed (40%)
· 57
of them known to me as singers or songs
(31%) That time i already knew
around 100 singers or groups
·
15
of common IDed and
Shazam
·
Around
10 nasyid songs (islamic music )
·
Venus form bananarama is not listed
·
I
shazamed a short 5-second part of an Indian song. It was one of the 4 songs
that were quickly identified by Shazam.
·
Additionally,
there were 7 old Indonesian songs from hot listings, one remix of an Indo
dangdut song,
·
and
a hymn called 'Terima Kasih Malaysia' supposedly from Nasional FM for the One
Malaysia program.
I also shazamed a dikir song, which
is a style of acapella singing accompanied by a drum. I personally dislike this
style, and it is similar to the style found in some places in Northern Nigeria,
which I find even worse.
Due to poor audio quality and
recording conditions, not all songs could be emotionally rated. Only around 6
songs received a rating of 6. Because of the low ID level, a second check was
conducted in a quieter environment, which yielded only one additional song.
However, Shazam performed well even under strong interference. The first
Shazaming was conducted under noise levels of nearly 70-75 dB.
Final Notice: Time traveling to the
year 2000 may seem rather useless. Most of the songs that I know today are from
that era and are played many times on Klassik or other streaming stations. The
few unIDed or unshazamed songs are
rather uninteresting.
2019 from recordings (added 6/1)
Testing an
older recording of a program from Klassik FM that was saved on the laptop in
2019 (at the time when the PC was replaced by the laptop).
The file
was quickly searched using Shazam, resulting in the identification of a total
of 23 songs, with a combined duration of 106 minutes, starting at 19:20 UTC, as
noted in the file's time signature.
Among the
identified songs, there was one English song at the beginning of the recording,
which was likely inadvertently recorded from another station. Of the 11
recognized songs, a few were already known to the writer. One song was not
initially recognized but one of the picks to the writer. However, 10 songs
remained unidentified after being tested one or two times before skipping to
the next song.
Short Test on 2023
This
is a short test made on the end of 23
This test started with Warna on 2030 -2100 then changed to Klasik until
2200 local time
Warna Singapore
During this 30-minute session, there
was a mix of songs from both Indonesia and Malaysia, along with several short
advertisements. There were a total of eight songs played, although one was not
identified. Of the remaining seven songs, two were from Indonesia and the other
five were from Malaysia.
Klasik FM Malaysia
This was a roughly two-hour
listening session with some self-promotion and short timed intervals of other
programs, one of which is usually on from 4-9 pm.
From this session, eight songs were
not identified by Shazam, with three of them giving false results. The one at
11:23 pm gave two Western songs: 'Family Time' by Spence and 'Plain Trum' by
Demi Yates. Another one at 9:45 pm played the songs 'All of You' by A. Davis
and 'Good Moving' by Symphonic.
If someone is interested in the ful shazamed
song listing I will be very glad to post it later.
The above text except the bottom is part of an ceased book “30 years Malaysia “ due to an extremely low ROI. Its very bad that only a handful out of 700
watched the promo , bought the book.
