Spiffy iPhone App
Ever heard a song on the radio, television or wherever and wondered what it was and by whom? Yesterday I was poking about the Apple app store just to see if there was anything new of interest there. I came across Shazam and figured I would give it a whirl.
It claims to recognise any music that is playing after a few seconds and will let you know what it is. With links to download that song from iTunes naturally. A few seconds later it was installed and I tested it out by playing a song on my Macbook’s tinny speakers and sure enough Shazam correctly identified it. Top Gear was on T.V. so I waited until they played some music and held the phone close to the television and it buzzed to say that it had correctly identified the song.
I was duly impressed. Even more so because the app is free. However it would be preferable to have wireless internet access to avoid being raped by O2 for the privilege of sending a few kb of data over their network.
Oh, if you have an iPod touch or a phone with Android it works on those too.
27 queries. 2.976 seconds.
Heard about that technology before and was a bit sceptical… but cool that you tried and tested it… by the way your new skin is really good… easy on the eye with just the right amount of balance.
Cheers Kieran – Mick wouldn’t believe me until I gave him a demo in the pub last night
Cheers on the theme. I modified it a bit from the original. I changed the image at the extreme top of the page. I also changed the font colours as they were a little on the light side. Although I seem to change themes like socks I think I will be sticking with this one for a while..
I’ve been using it recently – and it certainly amazed me. Especially at how quick it recognises the song, it’s helped me to expand my iTunes vastly in the past week – and it’s a nifty party piece!
Highly recommended!
Aaron.
they need to make something like this for ordinary computers. i got a shitload of mp3s with no name on them
Get an iPhone or one of the other ones compatible and play them out over your computer’s speakers
i ve tried it and it works great ..how they can do it???? is another question maybe there are hidden tags or codes in studio recordings ??
Hi Ger,
I guess they have a database of most popular songs or at least those available on iTunes. The phone records a 10 second clip and just searches for a match.
As for how they actually manage it, they probably have database hashes of the original songs, create a hash from the uploaded sample and search for that.
Actually a quick poke at their site just seemed to confirm this:
“This clip is run through our database of over 6 million tracks (which extends back to the ’50s) to find an exact fingerprint match.@