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Siri now unable to identify songs on iPhone 6 after recent iOS update

I use my iPhone to listen to music while I commute, using bluetooth connection. Been doing this for years and it is extremely convenient. While a song is playing, I could hold the home button to launch Siri and ask, "What song is this?" Siri would tell me the name of the song and artist. Great feature and prevents me from trying to read the phone screen while driving. After the recent update, Siri now says, "Sorry, I cannot identify music while connected to Bluetooth." Why not?? It worked for several years and now suddenly stopped working after the recent update. Please fix this issue!

iPhone 6, iOS 9.2

Posted on Dec 16, 2015 1:39 PM

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Posted on Jan 5, 2016 4:14 PM

I have the same problem and I don't even have Shazam installed. When it was installed I had this problem so I removed the Shazam app. Now after the latest iOS upgrade, Siri "locally playing" song identification stopped working again. Shazam app is still not installed, but Siri has lost a lot of usefulness for me.


IT would seem trivial to check to see if the music player is playing music and report what it is playing. If the music player is not playing, then listen to the external sounds to identify what's playing.


THe current approach fails all kinds of user friendliness criteria: it is unexpected behavior, it is not user friendly, and it is not intuitive functionality. It is also a needless restriction of very useful behavior. I rarely use the Siri song id function for anything else.

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Question marked as Best reply

Jan 5, 2016 4:14 PM in response to bubbagumpp

I have the same problem and I don't even have Shazam installed. When it was installed I had this problem so I removed the Shazam app. Now after the latest iOS upgrade, Siri "locally playing" song identification stopped working again. Shazam app is still not installed, but Siri has lost a lot of usefulness for me.


IT would seem trivial to check to see if the music player is playing music and report what it is playing. If the music player is not playing, then listen to the external sounds to identify what's playing.


THe current approach fails all kinds of user friendliness criteria: it is unexpected behavior, it is not user friendly, and it is not intuitive functionality. It is also a needless restriction of very useful behavior. I rarely use the Siri song id function for anything else.

Jan 6, 2016 9:40 AM in response to bubbagumpp

I have the same problem. Except when I try to identify a song I'm playing through my headphones, I press the button and Siri says she's listening - as though expecting me to play an external sound source. This used to identify the song currently playing, but as you say, seems to have stopped working. I wish Apple would tell us when they change these things.

Jan 9, 2016 7:13 PM in response to bubbagumpp

This helped me so much, I thought this was a bug because I always used to ask siri what song is this and it would tell me the currently playing song from my music. Now it seems to default to the shazam feature where it begins listening for external music. This was very frustrating and I thought it was a bug. I guess not. It seems like Apple would be smart enough to code siri so it distinguishes when a track is being played locally or not. Perhaps in iOS 10 this will be a "innovative" feature.


iPhone 6s iOS 9.2

Mar 12, 2016 11:21 PM in response to Mr N

I too was hugely disappointed when the feature went away a while back; I use it all the time. And then several weeks ago, the capability returned and I was thrilled, I figured either they'd fixed the bug, or that enough people had complained and they had restored the feature. But several weeks ago, it stopped working AGAIN. I know this isn't the place to vent, but as someone who started out with the original iTunes and original iPod and have gone through 3 iterations of that venerable device, I have reached a point where if I could find something easy enough to learn and transfer music over to, I'd be dumping the whole iTunes system. It has gone from the easiest, most user-friendly way to handle my music to being one of the most complicated, technical, unreliable, unintelligible systems I've ever had to use. I've already reverted to PC, having gotten sick of dealing with my Mac (and will never look back)...now that I'm about due for a new phone, I'm seriously thinking about jumping ship to one of the other companies. I don't see a whole lot that Apple offers that isn't available from some of the other manufacturers. I don't think they care about us anymore unless we're big technogeniuses. And I'm not.

Mar 12, 2016 11:22 PM in response to Sleazey

I too was hugely disappointed when the feature went away a while back; I use it all the time. And then several weeks ago, the capability returned and I was thrilled, I figured either they'd fixed the bug, or that enough people had complained and they had restored the feature. But several weeks ago, it stopped working AGAIN. I know this isn't the place to vent, but as someone who started out with the original iTunes and original iPod and have gone through 3 iterations of that venerable device, I have reached a point where if I could find something easy enough to learn and transfer music over to, I'd be dumping the whole iTunes system. It has gone from the easiest, most user-friendly way to handle my music to being one of the most complicated, technical, unreliable, unintelligible systems I've ever had to use. I've already reverted to PC, having gotten sick of dealing with my Mac (and will never look back)...now that I'm about due for a new phone, I'm seriously thinking about jumping ship to one of the other companies. I don't see a whole lot that Apple offers that isn't available from some of the other manufacturers. I don't think they care about us anymore unless we're big technogeniuses. And I'm not.

Mar 16, 2016 9:52 AM in response to Kent Herrling

I know what you mean - I'm seriously considering giving Samsung my cash next time I buy a phone. I started using Apple's products mainly because Microsoft Windows was such a nightmare to use. But with Apple's lack of attention to detail over the last couple of years, I feel as though they've lost their advantage over other systems.

Siri now unable to identify songs on iPhone 6 after recent iOS update

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