FoundCloud - Web App Development
Like Shazam, but for songs that only live on SoundCloud. Built completely solo, from the database to the design
Live now! Put on a DJ mix, hold up your phone, and see if FoundCloud can find the track.
Overview
Shazam, but for SoundCloud
FoundCloud finds the edits, bootlegs, and secret tracks that DJs love to gatekeep. I built it because I was tired of falling in love with songs I could never find again.
- !The problem Shazam only knows official releases, so songs that only live on SoundCloud are impossible to ID.
- Why it matters No ID means no full track, no way to credit the artist, and nothing to share with friends.
- +The solution My own audio-fingerprinting app, built from scratch, that matches what's playing against 10,000 SoundCloud tracks.
Result
Hold up your phone, get the track
What came out of it
- 10,000 tracks Downloaded and fingerprinted, all by me
- Built solo Crawler, algorithm, server, and site
- Live on AWS A working proof of concept you can try right now
The process
How I got there
Problem
I'd hear a song for one minute, then never again
When I was DJing, I'd fall in love with a track that played for a minute in someone's mix, and then… nothing. No tracklist, no full song, no way to credit the artist or share it with friends. A whole side of listening was closed off, for me and for everyone else.
Shazam
Only knows music that went through official distribution.
SoundCloud
A playground of edits and bootlegs, with nothing to search it.
Problem Statement Listeners need a way to identify songs that only exist on SoundCloud, so they can find the full track, credit the artist, and share it.
How It Works
How it finds your song
The Hard Part
A matching algorithm from nothing
The hardest part, and the part I'm proudest of. I started with nothing but 10,000 songs and a lot of reading about how audio fingerprinting actually works, starting with how Shazam does it.
The trick was figuring out what stays the same when a song plays somewhere else. Low frequencies are easy to map, for example, but you can't always trust them coming out of a speaker in a loud room.
A song's spectrogram. The loudest peaks become its fingerprint.
Next Steps
Where I want to take it
So far, this has mostly been me building on my own. Next, I want to hear from the people who'd actually use it: real research, and interviews with friends who care about finding music as much as I do. Then I'll let that guide ideas like:
- +Match from a link Pick a section of a mix, like minutes 13 to 15
- +Right on SoundCloud A browser plugin that works on the page
- +A bigger library More songs, more matches
- +Meet the artist Dig into who made the track
I don't want it to turn into this whole big thing, though. I just want it to help people find the songs they don't have an ID for, and do that really well.
Reflection
Why this one matters to me
- So many missing connections! There's so much good music out there, and so little to help you find it all. FoundCloud makes discovery a bit more democratic, so people can enjoy more music, share it, and give love to the creators who made it.
- Both halves of my brain This is the project where both halves of my brain finally got to work together. I found the problem as a listener, then built the fix myself.