Shazam was once so widely recognized that it became synonymous with music identification. However, since Apple took over and rebranded it as Music Recognition, you no longer need to have the Shazam app installed.
Apple has been enhancing this feature, and with the iOS 18.2 beta, it can now identify not just songs but also the locations where you heard them.
Whenever you request song identification from your Apple device, the track is saved to your history, allowing you to revisit it later. If you discover a song you love, for instance, you can go back to check out the artist or album on platforms like Apple Music or Spotify.
Macworld has reported that the iOS 18.2 Music Recognition feature has gained a new ability: it records your location when you identify a song.
With iOS 18.2, the Music Recognition feature now geotags songs based on where users discover them. When a user taps and holds the Music Recognition toggle in the Control Center and selects History for the first time, a new introduction screen appears. This page emphasizes existing features like song history and iCloud sync support, while introducing a new function called Musical Memories.
Upon granting location access, a geotagging feature is automatically activated, tagging songs with geographical data. Henceforth, when you identify songs with the Music Recognition tool, it will associate your location with the song history, helping you remember where you were when you first heard it.
The site notes that this feature operates at the individual song level, requiring manual navigation through the history log to access the data—you can’t extract a map of your song queries yet. However, this could evolve into an exciting future feature, perhaps identifying the coffee shop where you discovered the most new music!
I definitely plan to utilize this while dancing tango, keeping track of which events (and DJs) introduced me to new tunes.
Image: DMN collage of images from Apple and Yaroslav Poltavskyi on Unsplash
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