Re: Defeating Music Identification Apps - Adding Gaussian Noise?

Did you see Benn Jordan's video on this (or an adjacent) topic?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMYm2d9bmEA

On Thu, Apr 9, 2026 at 3:29 AM Ivan K <ivan_521521-/[email protected]> wrote:

> I teach music courses for non-majors, and for the past five years, most of
> these courses have been on line.
>
> Often, I have quizzes that include students identifying music from our
> assigned class listening: for example, music from the Middle Ages,
> Renaissance, Baroque, etc.
>
> As some of you may know, there are phone apps now, the most prominent
> being "Shazam" that can identify almost any commercially released audio.
> All a student has to do is hold the phone to the speaker, the app searches
> a database, and then lists the composer, composition, and even information
> on the recording.
>
> Now, I know a number of my students use such apps to cheat on on-line
> quizzes.
>
> Also I have read how one can add a bit of gaussian noise to a sound file,
> and while to the human ear, the music sounds identical, adding this noise
> can interfere with or prevent these identification apps from identifying
> the music.
>
> My problem is, while I have read about this, I have yet to locate  a tool
> that will do this for me.  Can anyone recommend anything?
>
>
> I suppose I could just create a file of some gaussian noise I downloaded
> from YouTube and then use ffmpeg to add this to one of my audio files.
>
>
> Thank you for your help.
>