An audio fingerprinting system and method. A server receives an audio fingerprint of a first audio piece, searches a database for the audio fingerprint, retrieves an audio profile vector associated with the audio fingerprint, updates user preference information based on the audio profile vector, and selects a second audio piece based on the user preference information. The audio fingerprint is generated by creating a matrix based on the frequency measurements of the audio piece, and performing a singular value decomposition of the matrix. To expedite the search of the database and to increase matching accuracy, a subset of candidates in the database is identified based on the most prominent musical notes of the audio piece, and the search is limited to the identified subset. One of the attributes of the audio profile vector is a particular audio class. An identifier for the audio class is generated based on an average of audio fingerprints of the audio pieces belonging to the audio class.