Sony Mobile will discontinue the TrackID Android app this September, as revealed by an in-app message that started greeting users of the popular music recognition service earlier today. According to the Japanse original equipment manufacturer (OEM), TrackID will be officially shut down on September 15 as part of the company’s efforts to “move forwards.” The firm didn’t provide a more detailed clarification on the matter, though its service is possibly getting discontinued due to losing a significant portion of its user base.
TrackID predates contemporary smartphones and their operating systems, with the audio search and recognition engine initially launching on J2ME-powered Sony Ericsson feature phones and also being ported to Nokia’s Symbian devices. Even though the solution eventually made its way to Android smartphones and tablets while also receiving a major design overhaul in early 2015, it seems that it never truly caught on and managed to reach the popularity of its simpler predecessors from the days when Sony Ericsson still existed and held a larger global market share than Sony Mobile does now. With the discontinuation of TrackID, users are also set to lose their search and identification history that cannot be transferred to another app, Sony said, without providing more details on the reasoning that led to the company’s decision. The OEM still recommends users to recreate their lists in other music Android apps if they wish to do so, noting that their usage histories will be deleted completely from the company’s servers once the service officially shuts down in late summer. Those who’d like to delete their data before September 15 can do so from the Settings menu of TrackID, just like before.
Apart from notifying users about the impending end of TrackID, the Japanese consumer electronics manufacturer also endorsed Shazam, a similar mobile solution designed for automatic music recognition and a direct competitor to Sony’s own soon-to-be-discontinued platform. The service itself was never known for being a particularly accurate tool for detecting niche and classical music, though the Japanese company primarily designed it with pop music in mind. The wording of Sony’s statement on the closure of TrackID indicates that the tech giant has no plans to launch an alternative solution at any point in the future, though it remains to be seen whether the company opts to cater to music lovers with another mobile app going forward.
