RSSShazam: eight million songs of the eternal Now
By Angela Gunn | Published December 5, 2008, 1:45 AM
It's a huge hit on the iPhone, and though we experienced a few quirks during testing, the Shazam music-ID service seems to have gained nothing but goodness by adding 2 million tracks to its knowledge base. We do, however, wish it took a broader view of music history.
The idea is appealing -- let your phone help identify a song you're hearing by transmitting it to a database that can ID it for you. It's a tricky task and there are a lot of services that think they have an angle on it: Midomi lets you sing or hum your track, the Open Music Encyclopedia has a variety of searches for the musically adept, Unknown Track awaits for those quick enough to record a sample, and SongTapper keeps time for those who can only manage percussion.
But those are Web-based services; Shazam sits in your phone -- or the friendly front end does, anyway. Offered in the iPhone Apps store since July (and currently topping the free-music-app chart there) and available in the Android Market as well as in various Samsung music-capable phones, Shazam has gained fair notoriety as the star of one of Apple's most current iPhone advertisements.
The problem -- with Shazam or any other music-ID service -- is that there's an awful lot of music in the world. This week, Shazam announced that it was boosting the number of songs known to its database to eight million -- more than Mufin, more than iTunes carries, more than anyone. Our testing revealed that while it's very, very good, there remains more music in heaven and on earth than any one service can tackle.
Not trusting our own somewhat dusty and obscure musical tastes, we asked various users of the Android and iPhone applications to do their worst, as we did the same. Combined testing indicated that on the whole, Shazam works when the phone is in either an open area (outside near a speaker worked fairly well), or indoors in a room with not too much echo. Echo, distance from the speaker, and loud ambient noise resulted in poor or no matches for individual songs, though accuracy rarely dipped below 50% in any case.
And what does a database of eight million tracks know? We had fair results (correct identification 80% or more of the time) with old and new pop hits, most relatively mainstream Western music genres, and even dance remixes from here and Europe. We had a few pleasant surprises as Shazam picked out more obscure artists, though even some tracks available from iTunes didn't register with the ID engine.
The system was on the other hand fairly useless on pre-1950s tracks, and it had some trouble with mashups by artists such as Girl Talk -- where we discovered that the software tended to identify the vocal track, not whatever sample was underpinning it. Our results with non-Western selections were reasonably good, though we admit our familiarity with those genres is limited; as the database expands, rapid improvement can be expected.
(There is, by the way, fun to be had on the Shazam Web site if you check to see what other people are IDing with the service in more or less real time. Your reviewer was flabbergasted at various points to see ID requests for both Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours," which has those two words as lyrics and not much more, and The Beatles' "A Day In The Life," which she was pretty sure could be identified by everyone in this galactic quadrant by now.)
Shazam for iPhone and for Android is free for download and use for the foreseeable future; the company does charge for its ID-by-SMS offerings, currently available in the UK. Fans of obsolete genres need not apply, but it'll soothe that ID itch next time you're hearing something you like at the mall or elsewhere in the 21st century.
So, does anyone know where I can get some Nike Air Jordan shoes?
lol. jk.
I was a little surprised and pretty happy to see Shazam on my G1 so quickly. I can't tell you how many times I listen to something on the radio that just melts into another song, or into an Ad. and I never find the song unless I memorize the chorus or do some investigating. Nice that now I just load Shazam and that's it. It's worked with every song I've tested on the radio, and it has NOT worked on some foreign stuff I've messed around with in movies - probably due to them being 'customized' for said movie....(not srsly of course since the songs appear in the credits, just for testing). Anyway, it's good to know that they're adding more to the db.
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yeah yeah yeah - we know
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How is this different than the music-id service I have on my Tilt? I dial a # in my contacts list, hold the phone up like a dork, and within seconds, I get a text message with the song info. I've had this phone over a year.
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Thats what I'm wandering...my POS phone had a service like this over 2 years ago.
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You're talking about Music ID, AT&T's white-label version. They use the same database, so in theory you will also get the expansion from 6 million tracks to 8 million. If so, the premise of the article still stands -- nice expansion, needs more breadth.
(And my sympathies on the dork thing; I've tested Sidekicks so I'm kind of impervious to noticing the stares, but I know exactly what you mean. Isn't it funny how the iPhone ad doesn't show *that* part of the process?!)
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Shazam was one of the first apps I used on my iPhone 3G, and i love it, is it perfect? of course not, but it's tagged things correctly for me about 90% of the time, Frankly, i'm amazed it's a Free app, as it's one of the few iPhone apps that i use that i would actually be willing to pay a few bucks for.
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Your reviewer was flabbergasted at various points to see ID requests for both Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours," which has those two words as lyrics and not much more, and The Beatles' "A Day In The Life," which she was pretty sure could be identified by everyone in this galactic quadrant by now.)
Umm, if you knew the title of the song you wouldn't really need to use this service, now would you. Duh.
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Hey...be nice!
Its hard to keep up with all of the various covers of the Barney's "I Love You"...
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Explain to me how one doesn't know A Day In The Life -- or, if you can actually hear music, the title of the Mraz song doesn't jump out at you like a perfume lady at Macy's. Seriously, I've grown numb to folks having low reading comprehension, but surely audio comprehension is a lower bar?
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This stupid service has been available for years, now the iPhone has it, it's a big deal?
Dumb asses.
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Agreed.
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(*gentle, kindly sigh*) Almost the weekend, so I know it's hard to focus. Recapping: Two million tracks added to a popular service; we wanted to see if it mattered re quality. If iTunes added two million tracks in one fell swoop, we'd be testing that too. In fact, I'd like them to do so; I'll make the time...
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