Android App development, need help.

[The Milkman]

Hey guys, im looking to develop a certain Android app, essentially, its a media player that is able to recognize samples of a song, isolate it, and allow you to search for other songs that sample it.

I have NO idea what I would need for this, I figure it would have to be a database of some sort along with a script or code in the app that can tag it, the problem is I know very little on how MP3s are built or how I can possibly do this without having the program actually look through the song itself. Also, it would have to be able to function as a off-line media player (granted without the sampling feature).

Thanks for any help

EDIT: Just to clarify, its not like how Shazam hears a song and gives you the name, it would work based on some sort of tagging system.

 

[Pleng]

How much background do you have in app development and working with music, because this sounds like a really, *really* complicated project.

For starters samples are rarely played by themselves in a song, they will be blended in with other music... so you will need to use some kind of fuzzy matching to say "I think this is the sample I'm looking for" and "I think this is a match for given sample".

 

[Jayenkai]

Absolutely, I can't imagine how complicated that would be!
Even something really really simple and basic can be hard to distinguished, just by playing it at a different speed..
Example : Same thing, twice. The exact same sample played at two different speeds.
Shove that in your engine, and see if it can cope with realising they're the same, 'cos even to my ears, even though I made it, it still doesn't sound the same!!

To try and filter out samples from within mixed audio. Yikes! No thanks!!

Shazam works on the principle that the music will sound roughly the same, no matter what. If you try resampling a track, warping it, and replaying it at a different rate, even Shazam will struggle.
To pluck out slices, and try to distinguish them? I honestly can't believe that's an easy task to achieve.

But good luck trying!

 

[coolbho3000]

There are APIs available to do what Shazam does.

http://echoprint.me/