Facebook Adds Shazam-Style Audio Recognition To Help You Automatically Tag Posts With TV Shows And Songs

Facebook has a new weapon in the battle against Twitter to host lucrative conversations about media. A Shazam-esque opt-in feature coming to the iOS and Android status composer can activate your phone’s microphone, recognize a TV show you’re watching or song you’re listening to, and tag it in your News Feed post. Friends can then listen to a 30-second preview of songs or see a link to a TV show’s Page.

Facebook built the audio recognition feature from scratch over the last year and it will roll out to iOS and Android users in the coming weeks. It’s an extension of the feelings and activity sharing option rolled out last year that lives in the little emoticon icon in the status composer. Facebook says 5 billion posts have used the options to share what you’re feeling (excited, tired), doing (Drinking coffee, playing basketball), or what media you’re enjoying. Soon that last activity type will be much easier to share thanks to the audio ID.

If users don’t turn it on, nothing will change about their Facebook experience. But if they do, they’ll see a little audio levels indicator when they open the status composer that can identify any of millions of songs or TV shows on 160 channels. The song or show will then appear in the list of activities you can choose from, and be added to a post with one click.

Thanks to APIs from Spotify, Rdio, and Deezer, users will be able to listen to 30-second audio previews of songs their friends share in-line in the Facebook News Feed. Licensing issues limit the ability to show video previews, so Facebook just displays a the season and episode number, a thumbnail image, and a link to the show’s Facebook Page instead.

Below you can see a video demo from Facebook of how the feature works:

If users turn on the feature and use it, audio ID could encourage more people to discuss music and TV on Facebook instead of elsewhere. Twitter has long reigned as the king of conversations about television, but Facebook has been on quest to steal that crown.