Shazam Listen on App Start

✋ What is it?

This is a solution found in the Shazam app. Shazam has a setting that allows you to trigger the Shazam listening functionality automatically after opening the app. After enabling this setting, the Shazam will always start identifying a song once you launch the app, bypassing any touch interaction to trigger it.

🤲 How does this interaction or solution work?

Shazam is an application that can identify music, movies, advertising, and television shows, based on a short sample played and using the microphone on the device.

Shazam users need to open the app and trigger the listening mode. Shazam will record the sample and will attempt to find a match. If the app finds a match, then it will show it to the user and will save it to a list of identified songs.

Shazam's core listening functionality is triggered by tapping the big Shazam button at the center of the initial screen. Although the process of triggering the listening is almost trivial, Shazam allows you to enable a setting that decreases the interaction friction even more.

Users can turn on the "Shazam on app start" setting, and after this every time they launch the app, it would start listening right away without any additional intervention or interaction from the user.

🙌 How does this interaction or solution work?

Reducing Friction and Automation

Shazam app is very powerful, but its core interactions are dead simple. However, there are always hidden opportunities to simplify interactions and repetitive task. In this case, Shazam realized that most users who launch the app are trying to identify a song that is playing somewhere. The tap interaction is simple, but it's an extra bit of friction that can be removed entirely by bypassing the 'tap on button' step and merely start listening right away.

One important takeaway from this solution is that Shazam doesn't force it on users. They acknowledge that although this automation is convenient, it might not fit all user flows or might not be the preferred behaviors of specific user cohorts. Therefore, Shazam exposes this feature as an optional setting that can be enabled or disabled at will.