Audio Fingerprinting Technology and its Application to Digital Media Content Distribution

Audio fingerprinting is a technique for determining whether an audio signal is identical to a portion of a known audio signal. Audio fingerprinting is an inherent feature of audio signals and can be identified by reference to an audio fingerprint database. The identification by the audio fingerprint is required to be robust against peripheral noise, changes in microphone and speaker characteristics, etc., and it is also necessary to have high speed capable of real-time retrieval from a large amount of music database. This article introduces a wide range of applications of audio fingerprinting technology in digital media content management, and explains the robust media search technology which is one of audio fingerprinting technology.