this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Free and Open Source Software
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From my understanding the "what song is playing" apps/services essentially have a big database of music stored in a special hash function. When you record the music it converts it into a hash, then compares it to the database.
Could these databases and algorithms be open source? Absolutely. Would it be really hard or expensive to maintain the database distribution or hosting? Definitely. Would music rights holders allow an open source project to have access to their music libraries to put into the database? Probably not... I would think that the services that do this have big agreements with rights holders that open source would not be able to get.
Uninformed copyright law speculation
IANAL, but a hash of music is not the music itself, something that can be converted to music, or in any way protected by copyright AFAIK. That being said, I think the rest of your comment is correct.I'd agree about the database probably not being copyright, but I was more talking about getting access to the music to convert in the first place.