Apple seeks patent to offer Shazam-like technology

Apple’s latest patent application suggests it is working on audio analysis technology similar to Shazam.

Discovered by Patently Appleon European patent search website Espacenet, the patentwas originally filed in the US in May 2014 and published by the US Patent and Trademark Office. This means Apple had applied to patent the technology before it announced it was integrating Shazam’s music identification technology into iOS during theirWWDC 2014 event in June.

According to the patent, Apple has invented its own audio recognition system and is looking to integrate technology into its devices which analyses audio input for speech and music.

The patent partly reads: “In accordance with various examples described herein, speech recognition related services can be integrated with music recognition related services in a single application to provide enhanced user experience. Specifically, a virtual assistant can be configured to provide both speech recognition and music recognition related services.”

It’s unclear whether Apple has applied to have the ‘virtual assistant’ form part of its Siri (Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface) iOS feature.

The inventor mentioned in the patent application is Apple Inc. Software Engineer Henry Mason, who has been with the tech giant since 2008.