This is my problem with this behavior. The reality is that if Shazam is malicious, it can grab data at any time without always grabbing data. Having them turn this off doesn't block them from being evil and grabbing audio when it suits them to do so. It would make it harder to mask the behavior, I guess, but that's a pretty weak guarantee.

On the other hand, this kind of behavior steals real resources from the system. In aggregate, apps that do this can waste noticeable battery and slow the system considerably. I don't want random apps deciding they're "important enough" to always run. It's user hostile even if it's not intended to be.

Shazam doesn't "always run". Don't want Shazam running? Simply quit Shazam. The on/off setting in dispute is an option within Shazam itself.

If that's true, then I don't personally care whether they are constantly capturing audio and discarding it. While that isn't as ideal as, you know, not doing always capturing audio, if it saves half a second when the user decides to capture audio and stops when the app is closed, I can understand that tradeoff.

I don't have Shazam installed on my laptop and honestly can't imagine I ever will, so this is academic for me.

Exactly. The sole purpose of the app is to capture background audio and analyse it. Don't want that? Don't run it. This seems to be a storm in a teacup. We're not talking a Dropbox-like system hijacking here.

Installed and running. It it's easy to simply quit the app.

Add to that, they're saying they don't send the recordings out except they do send only “digital fingerprint summaries of the audio.” We all know they mean "hashes" which can be reversed, given the correct set of circumstances.

Yes, identifying the songs you listen to is the whole point of the app.