InfoMedia - Q+A with Chee Wong
FierceDeveloper editor Jason Ankeny spoke with Shazam's Chee Wong about the ShazamiD app, and about the challenges OS fragmentation for developers.
Chee Wong on the inspiration behind the ShazamiD app: The idea came from co-founder Chris Barton being frustrated by hearing songs on the radio when the DJs didn't say what the song is--he felt there needed to be a mechanism to discover that information. So he thought "What if we were to put a link to the radio station so you can get the title and artist?" The user would record a sample of the song on their mobile, and the system would recognize the song.
Chris then went to Stanford University, where he met with a professor named Julius Smith [professor of music at the university's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics] to find out if something like Shazam had been done before. Professor Smith said "This needs to be invented." It started with a need first, rather than with the technology.
On the iPhone's impact on the Shazam app: July 11, 2008, when the iPhone 3G went on sale, is what I call the moment of truth. When Apple first announced it would release a 3G iPhone, they made a release of the SDK available to a few developers. When I got a hold of that and played with it, I knew it could fulfill our vision. When users hear a song and like it, they tag it, then buy it--then they want to share it. It's an experience. And all of the things we envisioned were realized by the iPhone.
Before the iPhone, there were a number of challenges--a lot of mobile devices were very small and very limited. They did not have multimedia capability. Billing was also an issue--it's not easy to get people to enter their credit card details. But with the iPhone 3G, all the connections are in place--you can buy a track from iTunes, share what you've tagged with users, click to see a video from YouTube, and get artist tour information provided instantly.
On developing for the Android platform: The iPhone was the first time we really appeared on consumers' radar. But we were already in service across 60 countries and 75 operators and working with OEMs. Now we're on Android. Each platform has strengths in its own way: The iPhone platform is fully fledged--it offers a great UI, the App Store and links to other services like iTunes. It's a delight to work in. But the iPhone environment is very closed--an app like Shazam lives on its own. It doesn't interact with other applications.
Android is very, very open. You can do anything with Android. It allows you to have more freedom. Its biggest strength is openness--Android allows other people to hook to your application, so when you're running parallel applications, you don't need to execute one to engage with the other.
On the challenges of fragmentation: The two most advanced environments are iPhone and Android, followed by Windows Mobile and Symbian, which follow the more traditional route of mobile platforms. The most challenging is J2ME, because different manufacturers implement Java differently. We deal with so many platforms, and they're all different, no matter how open they are. It's not a truly open world. For each platform, you need different development--the interaction paradigm, and how you click a button or navigate, needs to be designed specifically for each platform.
Our vision is to have Shazam on every single device--that's a perfect world for us. Herein lies the challenge: How do we get there? We have to build strong and deep relationships with OEMs and carriers, of course. But music discovery alone is not enough--we want to take the user through a musical journey. That means all the associated destinations need to be nurtured and developed. That requires a lot of effort and time.
On advice for aspiring mobile developers: Always start with a clear story you can tell. People who make movies talk about storyboarding, where you break down the plot and action. In the application development world, it's the same thing. Keep it simple--don't throw the kitchen sink of features into one application. It will confuse users and make the application unnecessarily complicated.
Icon attribution to Snap2Objects used under a CC license.
Comments
Post new comment