Posted on Mon Jul 21, 09:11 PM in Music
The answer to my prayers. Ok, not my prayers, but rather my earnest yearnings.
Years ago, I commented to some friends of mine that Google, already the accepted leader in web search engines, should develop a musical version. I’m no engineer, so I have no idea how it would work, but I envisioned having the computer user have some sort of simple audio input device to sing/hum/playback from the radio a piece of unidentified music which the Google music search engine could then take, analyze, and report it’s title, composer/artist, and other such information. Because, let’s face it; how often have we all heard something and said, “What is that?”
With the latest software upgrade for the iPhone, we now have access to the App Store. I was browsing the Featured tag today and came across what I think may be my answer: Shazam and Midomi.
The radio is tuned to the local independent station, one of a few which has really long uninterrupted sets. Now, I no longer have to wait for the DJ to come on at the top of the hour to backtrack the listing (or go online myself for a listing). If I can hear it, I turn on Shazam from my iPhone, hit “tag now,” and it will spend less than a minute “listening” and sending the request (presumably to iTunes), and cough up the artist/album/title combo, with album art if there is any. This is perfect for me, because I’m not in the know on anything current and/or popular.
It does have its downfalls. It has a difficult time recognizing classical tracks (we suspect the success rate depends on if it is cataloged in iTunes), and anything independent or not commercial/mainstream (The Dark Clan or Null Device) wasn’t found either, even if they were cataloged in iTunes (which the aforementioned examples are). I’m guessing world/ethnic music might suffer similar fates.
But for the rest of the music in the world, and for what I need it for, this is an amazing app. And it’s free. Next time I’m in a club and I want to know what they are playing, I take out my iPhone and find out, damnit!
The perfect sidekick to Shazam is Midomi, which not only can do a little of what Shazam does, but will recognize singing and humming. You can use it from their webpage, too, but they also have a convenient iPhone app. So if your friends are listening to your lame attempts at recreating a song you heard this one time in a bar… at least your iPhone will get your back.
iEatBrainz can do this if you don’t know what an audio file is. You can’t hum into it or anything, but it’s handy if you have an old improperly tagged file from the wild days of the web (Napster, etc).
Then it can find all of the albums that a song has been on (example: a David Bowie track that’s been on a bunch of releases).
Oh crap. I didn’t know it would actually post my e-mail address (I thought it was just to send a verification e-mail). I should have put some nospam type phrases in it. :/
Thanks.