AT&T Wireless Announces Music ID Service

mindless4210 writes "AT&T Wireless announced today the release of their new Music ID Service from Musicphone. AT&T customers can identify songs by dialing '#ID' and holding their phones next to the music source. Daily Wireless did a full review of the new service, testing it in several environments against different genres of music. Now you can finally figure out the name of that song on the radio that you've been dying to know!"

Comments

Is this a cool idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes

Re:Is this a cool idea?

[uberTr011]

That is friggen impressive, and most webpages don't impress me (especially slashdot! Zing!!!!). Oh yeah.

Re:Is this a cool idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does that site do? All I see is a drop down box where I can choose a US state, several empty ones without captions and one which says "null"...

Re:Is this a cool idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Turn on Javascript and pick a city.

Re:Is this a cool idea?

[Neil Blender]

What does that site do? All I see is a drop down box where I can choose a US state, several empty ones without captions and one which says "null"...

Pick a city, it gives you a list of radio stations in that city. You can then pick a time and it will tell you the song and artist playing at that time. It also provides a way to jump to amazon or ebay to find and buy the cd if you want. Looks to be add free so I would guess they must get referal payments or something.

Re:Is this a cool idea?

[endquotedotcom]

Yes it's cool, especially since it's also on AT&T, provides exactly the same service (probably with better accuracy), and is free.

Does the right hand not know what the left is doing over there, or what?

Re:Is this a cool idea?

[gilrain]

Well, free from an AT&T Wireless phone... So yeah, I think the hands know what they're doing. :)

Re:Is this a cool idea?

[G-funk]

No. gayest idea evar. Have you ever tried holding a mid-call phone near a radio (or even a powered speaker system)? You get shitloads of interference from the phone signal.

Re:Is this a cool idea?

[chez69]

too bad it is wrong on the stations in the city where I live

Re:Is this a cool idea?

[Legatoistheman]

I think this idea is utterly retarded especially if they charge you for it. You can just remember some of the words of the song and go on the internet and find what the song is....for free too

Re:Is this a cool idea?

[lpangelrob2]

That's impossible. There are far too many songs per hour on that page to have come from an actual radio station. Where's the endless list of commercials I keep hearing?

Re:Is this a cool idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

True. But the technology removes all that background noise - amazing eh?

Good idea, too much money.

[jrj102]

I've done extensive development work in the area of audio watermarking and audio fingerprinting, and I'm amazed that AT&T can make this happen, given the reduced fidelity of a wireless phone connection. Music fingerprinting technology is a smaller (and more approachable) problem domain than open-ended speech recognition, but still this is quite an achievement.

I congratulate them on the technical achievement, but I think that $0.99 (which is the price quoted in the review) is way too high a price for this service-- for that I could actually buy the song on iTunes or Napster. Unless they drop the price, I don't think this service will be terribly successful.

On an interesting note, it is not clear from their TOS whether or not you still have to pay for a song recognition even if the service is unable to accurately provide you with the song title.

Cool idea, but not for a buck.

--- JRJ

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[MaineCoon]

How could you buy it on iTunes or Napster, unless you know the name?

Now, will their system overload if you try to get it to recognize Death Metal?

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[silverbolt]

How would you buy the song if you don't know which one it is ?

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Coward the Anonymous]

"I congratulate them on the technical achievement, but I think that $0.99 (which is the price quoted in the review) is way too high a price for this service-- for that I could actually buy the song on iTunes or Napster. Unless they drop the price, I don't think this service will be terribly successful."

Kinda hard to buy the song from iTunes if you have to use this ID service to find the name.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[gid13]

I don't think it's too much money, after all, I know 99% or more of the songs I want to know the names of, and as such wouldn't bat an eye at the one out of 100 I didn't.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[DotWarner]

Considering that there have been plenty of times when I would kill for this information, $.99 is peanuts.

The question, however, is this: is it good enough to correctly identify the song if I hum a few bars?

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[jrj102]

Not if you don't know the name of it...

OK, fair enough... but we're talking relative value here: if the song itself is worth a dollar then how much is the NAME of the song worth? It just doesn't seem like a good value for my money.

What they need to do is offer 100 songs for $10 or something, or add it as a flat-fee monthly addition to your service. (or, dare I say, a free value-add to distinguish their cell phone service from others!) Obviously, nobody at AT&T has read Seth Godin's Free Prize Inside.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Torgo's Pizza]

It would be better if they bundled the pricing with an option to purchase the song as well. Chances are that if I want to know the name of the song, I would buy it as well. A buck for the name of the song and buying it becomes a value to me.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[110010001000]

One thing tech people aren't good at is deciding how much to charge for a product. Most tech people will charge way to low for a product. I used to be that way, until I found out how much a house costs and how much a lawyer and doctors charge.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[phatsharpie]

On an interesting note, it is not clear from their TOS whether or not you still have to pay for a song recognition even if the service is unable to accurately provide you with the song title.

From the article:

AT&T will let you test the service for free your first call, but everytime after that it costs $.99 cents, plus standard airtime charges. If it can't guess the song, then your next call is free.

Not fan of the "next call is free" policy. I'd rather have the current call to be free. Who knows when will I try to use it again.

-B

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[MisterFancypants]

The question, however, is this: is it good enough to correctly identify the song if I hum a few bars?

No. These audio fingerprinting services work by comparing audio samples of the songs (as recorded). They won't work if you hum a few bars into the phone. Hell, they wouldn't work if you played the tune almost perfectly on a piano, for that matter.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[DotWarner]

Guess I'll have to stick to the guy in the next cube, then.

Oh, and this for classical pieces.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[adamgeek]

the "next call is free" policy, i would assume, is implemented to discourage people from abusing the system.. with music they KNOW the system can't identify. i.e. they still have to pay for a call to get their freebie.. if every call it misses on is instantly free, i am sure some drunken frat boys would be calling all night farting into the phone just to giggle at the results. or maybe not.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[afidel]

They ARE going to bundle the ability to buy the song, the album, or the ring tone of a song eventually. THAT is where the real revenue will come for them. As other people have noted a buck for the ID is expensive, but if they can get the people with the disposable income to use further services then they probably have a good revenue stream. Personally I would carry the cost of the ID service and do all the bundling, kind of use the ID feature as a loss leader to bring people into the ad stream for all the other services.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[mkaltner]

You're right except for one factor:

You don't know what the song is called, nor who plays it!

How are you going to jump on ITMS and buy it if you don't know who it is?

You do bring up a good point however. What if it CAN'T identify the song? Do you still pay for the service? I would assume/hope that if it fails, you don't pay. But, what about false-positives? The service may very well believe that it identified a song correctly and charge the user accordingly. IMHO, this service only has a limited range of use anyway as I doubt it will identify the latest songs from Cradle of Filth, or say, Meshuguh.

I can see it now, I dial #ID into my snazzy little AT&T cell and play a some Tiamat into the mic and it comes back with: Britney Spears!

Doomed to fail horribly in my opinion.

- Mike

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Anonymous Coward]

And what if it is also unable to guess the song on the next call? Do you only get the next one free, or do you now get two free?

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[amembleton]

I've done extensive development work in the area of audio watermarking and audio fingerprinting, and I'm amazed that AT&T can make this happen, given the reduced fidelity of a wireless phone connection.

Then prepare to be amazed!

I've been using the same tech here in the UK for the past year and it really does work. Most of the stuff I listen to is not chart stuff, I didn't believe it would be all that good but, yes it really is.

When you'd kill for the name of the song and your mates don't know it, then its great to just dial 2580 and direct your phone's mic towards the nearest speaker. Shazam then sends you a text of the name of the song and you can access a list of all your songs on the Shazam website. It costs 59p here which is ~99c.

For those suggesting that you should be able to get a song with your purchase; Shazam let you get a ringtone (mono or polyphonic) just after you get the name of the track. I haven't used this yet so can't commment on it.

As for its accuracy I've only once had a problem with it and that was because I was in a club with very bad audio and decided to basically 'test' Shazam out. There was a part of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Sprirt that didn't sound anything like it should - just a lot of high pitch noise. Shazam couldn't work it out, so I got my next song name or 'tag' for just 9p.

You will be suprised by this service.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[glpierce]

"Hell, they wouldn't work if you played the tune almost perfectly on a piano, for that matter."

Unless it's a piano piece, of course.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[jrj102]

Don't get me started on how audio fingerprinting works. :)

--- JRJ

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Chiasmus_]

How could you buy it on iTunes or Napster, unless you know the name?

You know, I was thinking about this, and the real solution here is for AT&T to partner up with iTunes and/or Napster in this regard.

It'd be pretty cool to be able to tell iTunes, "I'd like to be able to buy this song..." (holding cell phone up to the radio), pay the standard $0.99, and then let iTunes pass off a nickel or so to AT&T.

But, yeah, doubling the price to hold up your phone to the radio rather than type a lyric fragment into Google is a little.. steep.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[jeffehobbs]

If it can't guess the song, then your next call is free.

In a related announcement, AT&T today announced their new Your Next Call is Free promotion.

~jeff

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Chiasmus_]

I used to be that way, until I found out how much a house costs and how much a lawyer and doctors charge.

Yeah, well, when your appendix explodes, or you're about to lose everything you own in some ridiculous lawsuit, the cost of a doctor or lawyer begins to seem perfectly reasonable - no matter what that cost is.

There's a vast difference between the value of those services and the value of "Ohhh... it's called 'Baby Got Back'? I always thought it was called 'I Like Big Butts'"

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[sydb]

Please tell us more about the 1% of songs you want names for, but you don't know the songs. I am interested in surrealism.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[cheezit]

Let's see...ultra-mechanical rhythms, very repetitive, cookie-monster vocals, no dynamics....I bet death metal would be easy. Plus, if it misidentified a song, who would know?

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remember, this is not the first service to provide for this service.

Were AT&T to say, "it's free if you purchase the identified song", then that would dangle a carrot. And how would you do that? Send a PIN to your phone and when you get to whatever you're going to use to download it, pull up the PIN and enter it.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Derg]

Plus, if it misidentified a song, who would know?


Bastard. Soda out the nose hurts. I want my dollar back. That was too funny.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Chiasmus_]

Unless it's a piano piece, of course.

Um, unless it's a piano piece, and all your piano keys sounded at the same timbre as the original musician's, and you were playing at exactly the same tempo as the original piece, and you were playing the piano in a soundproof studio into a mic positioned essentially where it was in the original recording studio, and then applying, in real-time, almost exactly the same compression and EQ and effects as the studio engineers did, and piping that through a speaker into your phone.

At that point, AT&T might be able to report back that you're playing the opening bars to "Nightswimming" but... probably not.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Anonymous Coward]

That really depends on how much you like big butts, I guess.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[gilrain]

That's a cool idea, but let me expand it a little. I'm not usually listening to the radio when I'm on my computer -- I'm listening to my iTunes library. I listen to the radio (sometimes) in the car.

I think it would be more useful if you could have AT&T identify the song, and then something like "Press one to cue this song for purchase in the iTunes Music Store." When you press one, AT&T sends the information to your iTunes account (you've opted into this by linking phone numbers to your iTunes account via they're account management page).

That way, you could review the songs when you got home, and place the order if you still wanted them.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[kengreenebaum]

JRJ and others,

I am soliciting article proposals for a future volume of Audio Anecdotes. Topics of interest include audio fingerprinting, watermarking.

-Ken, keng@sworks.com

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[po8]

But, but...the review of the service said it's good: the only piece it got wrong was Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and that was "incredibly difficult".

For pity's sake: "incredibly difficult"?? It's one of the most popular pieces of music in the world. And you just posted a link that should be able to identify it fine.

With its advanced "audio fingerprinting" technology, AT&T has managed to provide a service that will tell me the title and artist of almost any piece of music I don't care about. Isn't fingerprinting what they do to identify miscreants?

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[NanoGator]

"and I'm amazed that AT&T can make this happen, given the reduced fidelity of a wireless phone connection."

On the flip side, songs have very distinct beats to them. Drum beats in particular. Just earlier today I was in a noisy restaraunt and I was able to identify a song just by the very faint beat I was hearing. That's a lot of information erased/garbled yet still recognizable. just a few spikes here and there.

Can't say I'm all that surprised. Music's a little easier to identify than dialogue in a movie, though.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Halfbaked Plan]

Ring tones in general should be illegal.

It should be legal to shoot on sight people using them.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Halfbaked Plan]

How is it 'abusing the system' if you waste the time to call and it can't identify the song? You didn't get your song identification. You shouldn't pay.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Draknor]

I've done extensive development work in the area of audio watermarking and audio fingerprinting, and I'm amazed that AT&T can make this happen, given the reduced fidelity of a wireless phone connection. Music fingerprinting technology is a smaller (and more approachable) problem domain than open-ended speech recognition, but still this is quite an achievement.

How hard can it be? The radio stations all play the same 10-15 songs over & over again - even with the over-produced, sound-alike pop crap I'm sure cell phone bandwidth is sufficient to tell from which animal that steaming pile spewed forth.

Not that I dislike (& have completely given up on) commercial radio or anything... ;-)

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[DzugZug]

Let's see...ultra-mechanical rhythms, very repetitive, cookie-monster vocals, no dynamics....I bet death metal would be easy.

Trance too.
This has been available in parts of europe (Ibiza?) for several years. I think it's available as a subscription service there. I've been waiting for it to show up in the States. Does seem a bit pricy though.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[adamgeek]

rather than quantifying exactly how it is abusing the system, let's assume that somehow in 100% of cases, it isn't.

but, now let's also pretend i suddenly own AT&T. i now own a giant corporation, and although i don't have my MBA, i have to assume it's standard business practice when owning a giant conglomerate to attempt to close every loophole where someone might attempt to use any of your resources to get anything for free, even if it's in the form of idle entertainment from calling and monkeying around with your musicID service.

anyway, that was my reasoning, and thus my assumption for making the next call free. discourages people from calling simply to make calls they know would instantly be free, and if repition makes people even slightly more comfortable with using a new service (and thus more likely to pay for it in the future), providing you a second free call might have an added side benifit.

i like candy.

actually, in retrospect, if it was my company (which it wouldnt be, because i'm not a shrewd business person haha), i would let people have free calls in order to encourage more use of the service.. but my guess is the uptight suits at ma-bell don't feel the same way.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[gstoddart]

Ah, but then they sell the information to the RIAA for another dollar that you're about to download it off Kazaa and then *they* send the BSA to your house to perform a 'voluntary audit'.

Next thing you know you're declared a non-lawful combatant who probably violated the DMCA and is a bad person.

Step 3, Profit!

*whew* Did I miss anything? =)

-1 offtopic, -1 moron

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Deraj DeZine]

Your depiction of business practices very high up in large corporations is stunningly accurate.

I, too, enjoy candy.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[smack_attack]

Patent that idea before they do, you'll make a killing licensing it.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[TechnologyX]

As your sig implies, no, you don't have a clue about what death metal music is.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[el-spectre]

Shit, death metal has more changes per verse than most entire albums (bands, genres...) do :)

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[jsebrech]

I have this haunting suspicion that somewhere there is a vast bank of people listening to music fragments and typing in the artist/title, or handing it over to the next person if they don't know. Probably in india.

I'm pretty sure they're not using computer recognition, because you'd need to have every version of every song fingerprinted, which would a truly herculean effort.

One way to test it would be to play a famous song yourself on your own guitar, and see if they give the correct answer.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, I think you're confusing trance with techno. Trance is much more dynamic, with a lot more melody. Techno is just very bangin' and mechanical. But what someone said, death metal is really dynamic, there's multiple tempo changes and different riffs. It's much more dynamic than most of the rock music out on the market (come on... punk? Same variation on 2 chords in every song since the Ramones) Hardcore is what you call the slow paced music with the dog barking cookie monster vocals, and I agree, that stuff is really dull.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[0x0000]

I congratulate them on the technical achievement, but I think that $0.99 (which is the price quoted in the review) is way too high a price for this service-- for that I could actually buy the song on iTunes or Napster. Unless they drop the price, I don't think this service will be terribly successful.

... how can you buy the tune if you don't know what tune it is? Perhaps they should change the nature of the service from "Name that Tune" to "Buy that Tune". You dial up and for $0.99 the service identifies the tune and squirts the MP3 down to your phone...

It is a neat peice of work, but I agree, a buck is too much for just the name of the song.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

Patent that idea before they do, you'll make a killing licensing it.

IANAPL but, I'm pretty sure that by revealing it here publicly he has given up any rights to patent it.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Technician]

I'm amazed that AT&T can make this happen, given the reduced fidelity of a wireless phone connection.

I don't find it hard to believe at all. Since this is to work with Clear Channel and they don't play anything not promoted by a label (no Indi music) and it has to fit the format (playlist in certain hour) it shouldn't be hard to identify one of the dozen songs played in a paticular hour time slot over a low bandwidth cell link.

To see if it really works, don't bother with the radio station. Try it with some of your own 3-10 year old CD's. There you should find the big gaping holes in the search database. When the database is just this weeks top 100, the task shouldn't be too hard. If you have one of the CD's they play, play a flipside track (for those who don't know, 45 RPM singles were played a lot. The hit is on one side. The other side almost never got airtime.). Simply playing a song that doesn't get airtime from a radio hit albun should show the limits of the search database.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[jmcgarey]

For the record:
Death Metal's rhythms are very complex and NOT mechanical or repetitive at all.

Just look at the wikipedia entries for two of the most important death metal bands:
Morbid Angel
or
Cannibal Corpse. Both pages describe the music as "complex". If you listen to anything either of those bands has ever done you'll find the that rhythm and tempo have abrupt, and constant changes.

Even progressive rock(considered to be "complex and elaborate") never has the kind of dynamic rhythms that death metal does.

There are plenty of ways to poke fun at death metal, and there may be other forms of metal for which this description may apply but calling death metal repetitive or mechanical really doesn't make sense.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Anonymous Coward]

are you actually going to remember the song lyrics when u are wasted at a club or something

u gonna run home to google it.

this is for convenience bro - and the price is steep but its a new service, it will drop...

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Cali Pidgeon]

While I agree it is a bit expensive for my consumption, I don't doubt that it will get used. I'd be far more likely to pay a buck to know a song I really like than I would be to have a cheesy midi ring tone, and those took in $56.8 million in US revenue in 2003.

Re:Good idea, too much money.

[Lord_Dweomer]

"if every call it misses on is instantly free, i am sure some drunken frat boys would be calling all night farting into the phone just to giggle at the results. or maybe not."

What makes you think .99 will stop them when they're drunk?

Radio?

[ryanr]

I would be using it to find out what that killer "track 3.mp3" I have is.

I would have made the number to call #ID3.

Sounds like pretty slick technology.

Re:Radio?

[Sn_wC_t]

i could tell you right now. It's Toxic by britney spears. isnt that every /.'ers track 3?

Re:Radio?

[Anonymous Coward]

Track 3 - 'Rock and Roll McDonalds' by Wesley Willis.

Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

More useless services from cellphone companies.

When will they get to lowering rates and giving cheap internet access? Hmm?

Cool

[JoeShmoe950]

That sounds pretty sweet. The cool factors pretty high, but what is the use? Some good recognition there. The only complaint I have, is how much R&D money went into this. This doesn't have much use besides "that song on the radio you've being dying to know". I'm thinking, couldn't R&D money go towards something better?

safety

[mastergoon]

Now not only will people be talking on their phones in their cars, they will be holding them up to the radio and turning up the volume!

mwahaha

[Aggrazel]

Turn this on next to will hung and watch a phone kill itself.

Re:mwahaha

[LostCluster]

Nah... it'd just report

Error: Music was not input...

Does anyone know this song?

[Anonymous Coward]

la-la-la-lalala-la-la-la?

Thanks.

Re:Does anyone know this song?

[Anonymous Coward]

'Rock and Roll McDonalds' by Wesley Willis.

Re:Does anyone know this song?

[Uber Banker]

Is it the cover of Anathema's Sleepless by Cradle of Filth?

Re:Does anyone know this song?

[Atomizer]

I think it's S.O.S.

Re:Does anyone know this song?

[blackmonday]

That's either "Under Pressure" from Queen or "Ice Ice Baby" from Vanilla Ice. That'll be 99 cents, please Paypal me.

Re:Does anyone know this song?

[Soporific]

I think you are missing a la in the middle of lalala.

~S

Re:Does anyone know this song?

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Uh...Morse code for SOS?

Re:Does anyone know this song?

[Doug Neal]

Me & My - La La Superstar

Re:Does anyone know this song?

[michaelhood]

la la la, la la la la la, la la la.. Can't get you out of my head

Hello, ClearChannel?

[LostCluster]

You know, it used to be the responsibility of the DJ to make sure listeners knew the name and artist of the tracks they played. They didn't have to say it every song, but they should do so before or after any new song that might not be familiar to the listeners yet.

Of course, that was before Clear Channel laid all the local DJs off in most markets. Now, the same network DJ banter can be heard before different songs in some cases...

Re:Hello, ClearChannel?

[Mike Hawk]

Heh, the clear channel rock station here has hardly a DJ at all local or otherwise. Most of the song introduction/explanation stuff is handled by listeners who called in to request a song. They record a little thing and its "Hi Im X from Y City and this is B record from C band."

Its pretty hot. Radio DJs are lame.

Re:Hello, ClearChannel?

[The-Dalai-LLama]

Also before Clear Channel put every popular song into every rotation on every station in the northern hemisphere at 15-minute intervals.

If it's the Next Big Thing(tm), you'll probably hear it enough times to memorize the lyrics before they ever get around to identifying the artist.

The Dalai Llama
...hit me baby, one more time...hit me baby, one more time...hit me baby, one more time....

Re:Hello, ClearChannel?

[cens0r]

I will give Clear Channel one point. All of their stations here in seattle seem to use RDBS to tell the station call letters, the current artist and song, and what comes up next. Very often they flash the weather during commercials. I don't know how many people have radios that support it, but I quite like it. If only KEXP would support it.

Re:Hello, ClearChannel?

[Kenshin]

You mean ClearChannel is actually playing songs you haven't already heard 10,000 times?

Re:Hello, ClearChannel?

[hiryuu]

You know, it used to be the responsibility of the DJ to make sure listeners knew the name and artist of the tracks they played. They didn't have to say it every song, but they should do so before or after any new song that might not be familiar to the listeners yet.


Announcing (particularly back-announcing, where they tell you what you just heard) is something that, quite often, costs the promoters more money - the station (or network) does it when the promoters pay to make sure it's done, to aid in the marketing of the tune. If the promoters don't pay for it, then it may or may not happen.

Re:Hello, ClearChannel?

[milkman_matt]

You know what's pretty cool, A couple stations around here actually input their songs and their EXACT time played in real time on their website, I liked it. There were a couple times I was in the car, heard the song, checked the clock and got the name, very exact, really nice and totally helpful.

-matt

My radio tells me the song name

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you can finally figure out the name of that song on the radio that you've been dying to know!

The radio in my car (a 2000 model) has a little button labeled "Info." If I press it, on many stations the name of the song will scroll across the display. This is just the factory standard Chevy radio that came with the car. I don't need my cellphone for this, you insensitive clod!

Re:My radio tells me the song name

[isorox]

Assuming you arent using DAB (which I doubt it as america is always 5 years behind europe on everything like this, hell you've only just discovered text messages, and PAYG isn't exactly hot over there, and you actually pay to *receive* phone calls) you're talking about RDS, it's not used by many stations in the UK, except for broadcasting the station name, and switching stations looking for traffic reports. There's capability to do a lot more though, including only selecting stations of a certain genre.

We've had this for ages in the UK, dial 2580 (straight down the middle) and you get a text with the name of the song.

What would be good is if for the same cost would be adding it to an itunes-a-like service and have your PC download it automatiicaly, with the cost billed to your phone.

Re:My radio tells me the song name

[Anonymous Coward]

Take it up the arse you limey spoof goobler

Re:My radio tells me the song name

[el-spectre]

Now now, be nice. Our country is 20 times bigger than yours. Takes a lot longer to deploy this stuff.

Keep it up and I'll start comparing long distance road systems :)

Re:My radio tells me the song name

[isorox]

Our road system sucks, 1/4 of the length it should be. Give me Germany's any day.

However a 55mph limit for a 500 mile drive? No thanks. How are you meant to do a 1000 mile jaunt with one driver in a day at 55mph? You can't even have a drink at the end of the day until you're 21!

I don't expect 3G coverage in every valley in Montanna, but there's no excuse in your cities and highways.

Re:My radio tells me the song name

[el-spectre]

Eh, most of us do 85 anyway. And drink at 15. Ain't laws great?

Shazam

[electrichamster]

Sounds suspiciously like the Shazam service we have in the uk (dial 2580). You can find their website here: http://www.shazam.com/

Re:Shazam

[Mose250]

Yes, yes it does... As the article clearly states: "The service is provided by Musicphone in cooperation with UK-based Shazam Entertainment. Shazam claims that their pattern recognition technology can identify recorded audio even under noisy conditions. Their music information database is Europe's largest, holding over 1,600,000 music tracks."

Re:Shazam

[Mateito]

Its the same company providing the technology and the song database.

Re:Shazam

[electrichamster]

And that teaches me to RTFA more closely before commenting :P

Re:Shazam

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on guys, mod the parent up!

Here we have a US relabelling of a UK service which has already been running for a YEAR!

Re:Shazam

[holizz]

Wait till the RIAA discovers Shazam's database...

Google is my savior

[talaper]

whenever I want to find out the name of a song that I heard on the radio, I just go to google and type in a lyric or 2 that I remember, and the word 'lyrics'.

it hasn't failed me yet!

Re:Google is my savior

[Mateito]

> whenever I want to find out the name of a song
> that I heard on the radio, I just go to google
> and type in a lyric or 2 that I remember, and
> the word 'lyrics'.

Whenever I want to find out the name of a song, I just post to one of the music groups on usenet:

"Hey, doesn't anybody know that song with the guy in it?
It goes kinda like Ba Baa Ba B' Baa Ba Baaaa.
and its, like, way cool. Anybody?"

Re:Google is my savior

[FrYGuY101]

That'd be the Pepsi "Joy of Cola" song.

Re:Google is my savior

[BagOBones]

Mod parent up. This is exactly what I do. For the longest time the song Pepper by the Butthole Surfers was driving me nuts because the Band name and name of the song always escaped me and no one ever remembered the song when I described the lyrics to them.

One night I entered what I remembered into google and BANG it found the song.

Re:Google is my savior

[DotWarner]

"Hey, doesn't anybody know that song with the guy in it?
It goes kinda like Ba Baa Ba B' Baa Ba Baaaa.
and its, like, way cool. Anybody?"

Oh...oh, ummm...dammit, I know that one! It's stuck in my head now, damn you! It's the one with the singer who sounds like he's kind of stoned and doesn't care. I think it's grunge. Aaaaargh, where's my cell phone?

Re:Google is my savior

[Anonymous Coward]

Most likely it's 'Rock and Roll McDonalds' by Wesley Willis.

Re:Google is my savior

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't work too well for classical or instrumental music.

What's that song that goes, like, A# G# F F F and then an A7 chord? With the timpani? You know the one I mean.

Re:Google is my savior

[Anonymous Coward]

Wesley Willis would be a problem for this system.

All his songs would ID the same.

Re:Google is my savior

[jeffkjo1]

Doesn't work too well for classical or instrumental music.
What's that song that goes, like, A# G# F F F and then an A7 chord? With the timpani? You know the one I mean.

Believe it or not, I know people who have been in this situation before, and they posted to usenet, basically, notes, and or 'ba baaa bippity bippity doo doo doo', and amazingly, people posted THE CORRECT response. USENET is awesome.

Re:Google is my savior

[DotWarner]

And when you want to identify the Allman Brothers song Jessica? Or can't think of the name Classical Gas? Or--imagine you'd never heard Louie, Louie before. How do you get the lyrics? Google is great, but it ain't everything.

Re:Google is my savior

[utahjazz]

What's that song that goes, like, A# G# F F F and then an A7 chord?

Behold Classical Music Search

I'm afraid there is no classical song that goes A# G# F F F, followed by anything from A7.

Re:Google is my savior

[Henk Postma]

That works pretty well, of course

....

unless you also have a liking for the finer shades of techno

....

and you can forget about humming the tune in the record store :)

....

"It goes a little like this Boom DaDaDa Boom, Boom DaDaDa Boom, Boom DaDaDa Boom, Boom DaDaDa BoomBoom"

Re:Google is my savior

[CrashPoint]

As would all songs by Metallica, KMFDM, AC/DC, and all Aerosmith songs recorded after 1990.

Re:Google is my savior

[SiMac]

The other day, I actually searched Google for "doo doo doo doo doo doo doo" "i want" and somehow managed to find the song I was looking for (Semi-Charmed Life)...never doubt the power of Google.

Re:Google is my savior

[DotWarner]

Much later and after asking around: aha! It's Greg Kihn, "Breakup Song (They Don't Write 'em like that any more)". The grunge thing was me getting that confused with "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World."

And you thought I was being facetious.

Re:Google is my savior

[indianajones428]

I just go to google and type in a lyric or 2 that I remember

That's my problem....I can hardly ever remember that there was a song I wanted to look up, let alone the few lyrics I might have heard. The only time I remember is when I hear the song again, which I'll try to remember but will inevitably forget before I get to my computer, thus starting the cycle anew.

At least with this system, you can get answers immediately. Not that I could afford 99 cents for such a service, but it could be useful if you have the money.

Re:Google is my savior

[dave420]

And if it's an instrumental, I guess searching for "Bwwaaaaaaahhhh... Duh duh duuuuuunnnnh... Bwaah bwaaaaaah duuunnn duuuunnnnnnh..." works great, too...

Re:Google is my savior

[Chris Pimlott]

You can also probably forget about hearing it on most radio stations...

I also have to wonder how big their music database is. The 4 successfully recognized songs are all major-label mainstream artists that get a good deal of airplay, while the one song it missed was classical (even though it was quite a famous piece). I would be surprised if their catalog was that knowledgable about electronica or other less radio-friendly genres.

fp

[Anonymous Coward]

first post I rock

Very cool article

[Beast1979]

Yeah, This totally seems like a gimmick to me. Why don't they focus on real features such as playing music on your phone with more storage and higher data speeds. --Grant Gochnauer.org

I remember something like this..

[gl4ss]

having been in use here some time ago, maybe a year ago, or two?

can any other Finnish people confirm?

I thought it to be just a cool gimmick, not something that real people would use.

Re:I remember something like this..

[Anonymous Coward]

I can confirm that there are Finnish people.

Re:I remember something like this..

[jc42]

an any other Finnish people confirm?

Funny; I was thinking of testing it out with some Finnish folks songs that I've heard but don't have names for. And some Bulgarian, Nigerian, Peruvian, and Chinese songs, for that matter. Also, I probably wouldn't be playing a radio for them; I'd be playing my fiddle or flute or accordion or Yamaha keyboard or some such, because I don't have recordings of them.

Think this would work?

I wasn't too impressed by their tests. They failed to identify Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Of course, I wouldn't need them to identify that one for me, since I know it. But there are some less-known sonatas, by lesser-known composers, and if they can't even handle Ludwig's Moonlight Sonata, what are the chances they'd recognize the others?

This isn't a trivial concern. There's a growing threat to musicians who accidentally perform copyrighted works without first getting a license. We've had stories of music industry guys showing up at sessions at bars and such, and hitting the proprietor up for a fine because the motley gang of fiddle, flute and accordion players played a copyrighted tune. It's a followup to the story a few years ago when they sued the Girl Scouts for singing copyrighted songs around the campfire. (And note that the Girl Scouts lost that one. Or rather, they caved and are paying the protection money.)

This is getting to be a serious problem for amateur musicians. You remember a tune and play it, and like George Harrison, you get sued for copyright infringement. But there's nowhere you can look up a tune and get the name and email address of the owner. If you want to do a proper search for permission, it'll cost you years of your life and millions of dollars. All you can really do is play it, and see if anyone sues you.

You could buy an annual license from every agency in the world. That would only cost tens of thousands of $$ per year. Yeah, right. That may work for a handful of top professionals whose albums are selling well. For the rest of us, especially us amateurs, it's far more money than we'll make playing music in our lifetime.

So what's the hope for a service that will correctly identify an old Finnish or Bulgarian or Mongolian folk song, or warn us that the tune is modern and under copyright?

(Actually, I could build such a site. I've been in several discussions of how to do it. But of course, it would be illegal, and I'd be sued out of business by all the copyright owners. ;-)

Re:I remember something like this..

[noidentity]

"having been in use here some time ago, maybe a year ago, or two?

can any other Finnish people confirm?"

I tried calling the service and reading your post but it didn't figure out what you were talking about. Oh wait, wrong service.

Re:I remember something like this..

[gl4ss]

You could remember the post it was a reply to, which talked about an music ID service.

I state that I recall seeing a system like this in use at least a year(or two) ago already, and asked if any other Finnish people remember it. It was a service that you could call to with your cellphone and it would tell you what song it was, it might still be in use but nobody has talked about it since it first came so it was just a gimmick for ID'ing some pop songs.

Yeah that's REALLY hard to figure out from my post, maybe it's confusing if you don't know that Finland is a country(and people from there are Finnish).

Re:I remember something like this..

[noidentity]

Sometimes my attempts at humor fail completely. Apologies.

Re:I remember something like this..

[4r0g]

Well, the Brits have enjoyed this service since 2002 as described here.

Shazam

Better be quick prompts

[Shurhaian]

Be a shame to try it, only to find that it takes three minutes to get to the point where it'll actually listen to the song; so here's hoping that they use something approaching smart design, and make the introduction/pickup time in general VERY short.

Ye gods, might this possibly be a first post? Probably not, with the time it took to write this, but anyway...

Re:Better be quick prompts

[Shurhaian]

Ye gods, where did all those posts come from? I swear the page was empty when I first clicked Reply. Ah well, no first post for me. I will live.

Re:Better be quick prompts

[dnamaners]

Fingers of fire and the service in speed dial and you will still probably have to enter your phone card # to use it at work... jsut to identify the song after the one you were trying for.

May be this will be a new "bundel" feature in that $66.95 phone plan that they push on you 2 times a day via a cold call.....

*hope AT&A gets around to sending me that recipt of me geting placed on their do not call list...

interesting

[Ferro_Man]

how are they planning on implementing this?
are they going to have people on the other end of the phone who are going to need to look it up in a database?
or a computer record the snippet of the song and then go song by song searching for a soundwave pattern that maches the recording?

either way i think this is a good idea

Re:interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

are they going to have people on the other end of the phone who are going to need to look it up in a database?

You are joking... right?

Could it enforce copyrights?

[Thinkit4]

Hmm, that's scary. Just plug it into the RIAA database of copylocked information. If they can prove that they discovered it first in this society from the timeless plane of information--they may have you.

Google

[haxeh]

What part about memorizing one line of the song and googling it is difficult?

Re:Google

[Neil Blender]

What part about memorizing one line of the song and googling it is difficult?

Some people listen to music without lyrics.

Re:Google

[kirk_out]

Exactly what I do - pick out a few choice words from the song and head to google. Picking good words is key however.

Re:Google

[haxeh]

Most people who listen to music without lyrics probably have some idea what they're listening to.

But does the price include...

[Control Group]

...AT&T's legal department coming to your assistance when you're sued for "rebroadcasting" the song into the cell network?

Until they can come up with one ...

[burgburgburg]

that can hear the song I can barely remember that is rattling around inside my head (but without enough of it left for me to legitimately even attempt humming/singing it), why even bother?

Why?

Re:Until they can come up with one ...

[battjt]

Whats that song about a guy sitting in a dinner named EAT when a little green man walk in and offers him a pill or cig. or something? I've been trying to think of it all day.

It goes like this. dah, dah, dah, dah...

Joe

Let's see if it knows this one...

[bravehamster]

Lets see if it can recognize partial songs.

Hmm hmm hmm Go with him...

And yet ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It can't even recognize Puddle of Mudd?!?!?!

http://www.mobilegadgetnews.com/modules.php?op=m od load&name=News&file=article&sid=1194&mode=thread&o rder=0&thold=0

There's just one problem.

[rdsmith4]

The classic rock radio stations play the same ten songs repeatedly and I know all those too well.

The pop stations tend to choose one mildly catchy tune to overplay every week, which they identify immediately before and after they play it (about 20 times daily). The rest is pure crap.

I guess the modern rock radio stations play different songs, but they all sound the same... loud guitars, screaming lyrics.

Country music - I won't go there.

It's an excellent idea but there's no market for it!

Shazam

[Anonymous Coward]

They've been doing this in the UK for over a year now, under the name Shazam on 2580 from any mobile

Typical AT&T misplaced priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the same AT&T Wireless that f's up my bill on a regular basis, has horrible customer support, and can't seem to provide basic service at crucial times. So this is what they are investing their resources on?

Yet another reason to leave AT&T when my contract is up.

Re:Typical AT&T misplaced priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

As one of those horrbile support reps Id just like to say - we dont care, we're the phone company. We all know who you are - no use using the AC, and your bill is messed up on purpose... (we had a copy posted in the lunchroom, they may have taken it down by now I donno...) Thanks for calling! ;)

The Last DJ.

[DAldredge]

As we celebrate mediocrity all the boys upstairs want to see

How much you'll pay for what you used to get for free

And there goes the last DJ

Who plays what he wants to play

And says what he wants to say

Hey, hey, hey

And there goes your freedom of choice

There goes the last human voice

And there goes the last DJ

Tom Petty

Re:The Last DJ.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that the battle cry of the post-Napster era? During the reign of Napster, the lyrics went:

• As we celebrate piracy all the boys upstairs want to say
  
  How much can you download for what you used to pay?

Re:The Last DJ.

[IntelliTubbie]

And there goes the last DJ

And there goes the last DJ

Damn, if only I knew the title of that song...

Cheers,
IT

Re:The Last DJ.

[Senjutsu]

Damn, if only I knew the title of that song...

Hold your phone up to the screen. Duh.

replacing that friend

[yagu]

Great! Now there's no use for that one strange friend who for some reason ALWAYS the name of that one song!

nifty...

[Anonymous Coward]

sometimes you just gotta know the name of the song so you can, uh, 'buy' it online

Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Already nearing slashdotting.

AT&T Wireless New Music ID Service Gets Put to the Test
Posted by james on Thursday, April 15 @ 12:46:28 PDT
This morning AT&T Wireless announced the availability of their new music recognition service, which allows their customers to identify songs just by holding their phones next to a speaker. AT&T claims that it is the industry's first service of its kind in the U.S.

The new service is perfect for music fans who are on-the-go, or anyone who just wants to know the name of a song they've been dying to figure out. All customers have to do is dial "#ID"--or "#43"--and hold the phone near a speaker when instructed to do so. Within a few seconds, a text message is sent back to you with the name and author of the song.

The service is provided by Musicphone in cooperation with UK-based Shazam Entertainment. Shazam claims that their pattern recognition technology can identify recorded audio even under noisy conditions. Their music information database is Europe's largest, holding over 1,600,000 music tracks.

AT&T will let you test the service for free your first call, but everytime after that it costs $.99 cents, plus standard airtime charges. If it can't guess the song, then your next call is free.

The new Music ID technology sounds quite amazing, but how was it's real-life performance? Daily Wireless decided to put the service to the test.

We conducted five trials on different genres of music in different environments. All tests were done with in areas with a good amount of background noise.

When you dial the number, you are greeted by a friendly recording that says, "Hello and welcome to AT&T Wireless' Music ID service powered by Music Phone. Please place your phone as close as possible to the speakers."

After that you hold the phone up to the speaker and wait. The call generally is around 30 seconds total, including the 13 second greeting. Here are the results from our tests:

Trial 1
Artist:Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Song Title: By the Way
Quality: CD
Environment: Office
Record Time: 22 seconds
Response Time: 14 seconds
Verdict: Correct

The Verdict: Correct!

Trial 2
Artist: Ludacris
Song Title: What's Your Fantasy
Quality: CD
Environment: Office
Record Time: 18 seconds
Response Time: 16 seconds
Verdict: Correct

Holding the Phone in the Office

Trial 3
Artist: AC/DC
Song Title: You Shook Me All Night Long
Quality: Radio
Environment: Car
Record Time: 25 seconds
Response Time: 15 seconds
Verdict: Correct

Holding the Phone in the Car

Trial 4
Artist: Mary Wells
Song Title: My Guy
Quality: Radio
Environment: Car
Record Time: 17 seconds
Response Time: 18 seconds
Verdict: Correct

Trial 5
Artist: Beethoven
Song Title: Moonlight Sonata
Quality: CD
Environment: Office
Record Time: 24 Seconds
Response Time: About 3 Minutes
Verdict: Stumped

The Verdict: Stumped

Conclusion

AT&T's new Music ID service seems to be right on. It successfully guessed four out of five of our test songs, and the last one was incredibly difficult. Even slightly-distorted music from the radio was not a problem for the service. The biggest downside is the price; at a buck per call it could add up quickly. Still, sometimes you just have to know the name of a song, and now AT&T customers can have their phones figure it out for them. I'm sure I will use it again in the future.

Been done in the UK for a year now.

[hoofie]

Its called Shazam and its been available for at least a year now. From what I've tried of the service, it works quite well.

Cost is 59pence per call (which must be about 35 cents or something in US of A money).

Re:Been done in the UK for a year now.

[FrYGuY101]

1 GBP = 1.79127 USD

59 pence = $1.05685

Re:Been done in the UK for a year now.

[hoofie]

Sorry, you are 100% correct - I got the approximate conversion the wrong way round - what a muppet..

Anyway, if its $1.05 in the UK, it just proves that the UK is ALWAYS more expensive than the States.

Something Similar

[dupper]

Though (presumably) less advanced, here.

I know that I (and probably most geeks) have thought of a music recognition program tied to a database, but it's good that somebody's finally actually developed it.

this can't possibly work for the stuff i listen to

[aberant]

Obviously this has to cater to the top 40 kinda crap that's be marketed as actual music to everyone today. what would really impress is being able to hold it up to some obscure jazz/electronic album and having the phone identify it. if you listen to any top 40 station for an hour, you can just as easily identify one of these songs as this phone can

And for a small supplemental fee...

[Aardpig]

...AT&T can arrange for any copyright violations to be reported directly to the RIAA, including full details of your name and address.

they match everything

[AssProphet]

This uses a pattern recognition database, much like the Neuros personal audio player
the thing about this type of software is that it will try to match any sound you play for it.
...I wonder what chart toppers sound most like my farts

Re:they match everything

[Anonymous Coward]

A fart would match something from the soundtrack to Southpark the Movie.

Valuable data...

[LostCluster]

Radio program directors would absolutely love to see a database consisting of records of what his competitors are playing. They could then sort and analyse that data by parts of the day and such, and realize what songs and artists his competitors are playing in heavy rotation.

He then could either duplicate that in his selections to move his station closer in format to the competitor, or intentionally avoid those selections to make it appear he has a wider variety of music on his station.

The data's out there, going over the air waves. It's just so expensive to pay people to log it...

Re:Valuable data...

[c4Ff3In3 4ddiC]

Good idea but you forgot one thing... Radio station's (for the most part) don't really care about the music, they're only interested in gaining advertisers. Now, if they could use this to increase the number of listeners in their target demographic, I'm sure it would be useful.

Re:Valuable data...

[LostCluster]

The point of programming is to convince people of the targeted demographic to tune in. Program directors cringe when somebody outside of their target demo says they're a big fan... it's a sign that they've missed the mark. :)

probably leverages govt. R & D

[SethJohnson]

This probably uses existing R & D from voice identification technology they developed for the US govt. For instance, Pablo Escobar was captured after he made a phone call. He didn't call a traced number or from a traced number. His voice simply popped up on the phone lines. Bam! They identified his voice and captured him. And that was more than 10 years ago. Obviously, this is an example of how this technology has improved.

Re:probably leverages govt. R & D

[viperblades]

You should check the documentary that the history channel did on that. A single native solider with cheap radio homing gear found him and got visual confirmation of him by seeing him in a window.

yes.net, free

[cft_128]

For the rare occasion that I want to identify music on the radio, I use the free www.yes.net. Give it a station and time and it will tell you the artist and song. Works pretty well, seems to use similar technology to AT&T, they have a phone interface (never used it myself) and, most importantly, it is free.

Alternatively...

[The-Dalai-LLama]

You can type a phrase or two from the lyrics into the amazing Google Intarweb Music Identification Service (it looks deceptively like the main Google page). I've had pretty good results that way.

Or you could use the Ask-Your-Music-Geek-Friend identification service, which is generally provided free of charge by your music-geek friends.

Sounds like another nifty-but-useless service that is probably laying the groundwork for something truly beneficial that is soon to come. Help for those with hearing or speech disabilities or cleaning up garbled telecom messages maybe?

The Dalai Llama
...sign me up when there's a service that identifies which movie a cool quote comes from...

Re:Alternatively...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've notice that the Ask-Your-Music-Geek-Friend service has a few problems where it broadcasts how much you love listening to Toxic by Brittney Spears and other such "informative" bits of information to the public when you ask for a song identification..

musicbrainz.org

[elinenbe]

please, check out this site for a much more complete product, with more tunes in the database, and it's free! http://www.musicbrainz.org/

Hum a few bars...

[diesel66]

I would be interested if I could hum some of the song to this service. Then you wouldn't have to catch the song playing on the radio. The phone thing is a little inconvenient, if you are too busy to make a call, or you don't often hear the song. The music I tend to like doesn't make it into heavy rotation, and so it's not likely I'll have my phone handy when they get around to playing it once a week. (I suppose this is fine if you like top 40, but then, how hard is it to find out the name of the song in that case?)

I recall seeing some CS student (probably their thesis) recently making a prototype search engine that would do this. Anybody recall?

Just use Infone

[Neil Blender]

According to their commercials they can do damn near anything and it would probably be cheaper.

Radio "RDS" Service

[Rkane]

The radio data system that is in a large chunk of new stereo's should make this service fairly ineffective. Most major radio stations now broadcast the song title and artist along with the music, and many new stereo's can do this. Why pay a buck for each song when you can buy a decent stereo and get the same thing for EVERY song. An example of a stereo with RDS can be found here. Not to mention satellite radio. If you look up a song every few days, you'd be able to pay your satellite radio bill instead.

Re:Radio "RDS" Service

[Lil'wombat]

IF everyradio station used the RDS system. Here in Chicago I can name 2 (two) stations that broadcast the artist and song title. And another 2 that use the RDS to identify the station. Thats in the chicago radio market.

Re:Radio "RDS" Service

[canavan]

If I'm not mistaken, car radios are not allowed to display this info as it is deemed distracting - at least I don't know of any car headunits that do, although basic RDS data is displayed on every unit since about a decade.

Cheaper alternatives: Look up the plalist on the radio station's website or just call the station, and they'll tell you.

Re:Radio "RDS" Service

[canavan]

That radio is also one of the may that won't let you read the current title/artist, it will only display the name of the station, allow you to select stations by the type of program or automatically switch to another station if there's traffic info or news on that station. Some stations do abuse the station name/callsign display to scroll through various texts, maybe including the currently playing title, but that's just an abuse of the RDS spec.

Some devices for home use do allow you to display every type of data sent by the station (mine can even overlay that on the video output), but not car head units.

Missing feature:

[El_Smack]

[Digital Operator type voice]
I'm sorry, the song you are trying to ID is by... Brittany ... Spears. Please hang up, and listen to something good.
[/Digital Operator type voice]

but...

[ambienceman]

AT&T still sucks...

I'd like to see when they introduce the new feature that allows me to actually make a call...and maybe a new feature that allows me to promptly speak with a customer rep.

Re:but...

[fo0bar]

I'd like to see when they introduce the new feature that allows me to actually make a call...

I'm not sure what you mean... My "outdated" AT&T TDMA phone is great. All of the other providers and technologies have phased out making calls, while introducing "features" such as surround sound ringtones, stamp-sized streaming pornography, camera, and The Mobile ARPAnet(TM).

Call me old fashioned, but I like the antiquated style of punching in a phone number, taking into a microphone, and listening for a response.

Re:but...

[afidel]

Huh? I've used my AT&T phone all over the country, including in the grand canyon and on Mt Whitney, never once had a problem, in fact I've never even had a dropped call with AT&T which is a heck of a lot more then I can say for Verizon or Cingular. With the ability to fall back to the nations best AMPS network you are basically assured of getting a singal, then again maybe your phone doesn't have AMPS support?

Re:but...

[ambienceman]

your argument is inline with mine, except that I don't agree that AT&T's service works as well as my Nextel. Granted, Nextel does have its quirks (premium price tag - at least initially, and limited service coverage), but where I know it works, it works. The price wasn't much of an issue...since I got a phone for free with my plan...and that my rate has been decreased by $15 a month since I've been with them for a year. That and I get a customer service rep. within a minute - almost everytime. And service is great within coverage areas...dropped calls are nothing like when I had Sprint and AT&T...etc. Nextel just works for me. They have the perfect motto..."Done" The bells and whistles should only come after you've got the back-end working right...

Re:but...

[ambienceman]

that's the problem. The lack a standard. They're always upgrading and putting things out of whack. I mean what was the deal with the "upgrades" that really were downgrades? That says a lot. They've got a lot of work to do beyond tunes identifying if they want my business...

not that I matter

Re:but...

[ad0gg]

AT&T was a great provider with TDMA, when they started switching to GSM, GSM sucked and they started neglecting TDMA maintence. I heard from AT&T reseller the reason why my call kept getting dropped was that regular maintence on TDMA cell site was not being done in order to deploy more GSM sites. This was almost 2 years ago and I don't how long they come since I promptly switched two verizon after most of my calls would drop within 10 minutes, which sucks when AT&T puts you on hold and you get connected and then you call gets dropped a minute later before you can even tell them that their network is dropping your call.

Re:but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh joy, another use for a driver's hands in the car, one cell phone to the ear and another pointed at the radio while they juggle coffee and possibly numerous other things.

Re:but...

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have their old-school tdma service. It's great. Don't be a sucker and "upgrade" to their GSM.

I figured GSM is the new "superior technology" that the smarmy Europeans have been bragging about for the last couple of years, so it must be better than what mainstream America uses, right? Wrong. It blows, and sucks, at the same time. I used to be able to take calls in the middle of the Arizona desert. Now I get dropped calls in my apartment, which is like a block from the nearest AT&T tower. At least I can identify songs on the radio, send animated, musical messages, and take pictures with my phone now, even though I can't call people on it. Hooray for GSM, the bright future of global telecommunications.

Re:but...

[afidel]

Yep, TDMA/AMPS. Like I said I have had great coverage nationwide because any area without TDMA coverage is going to be backfilled by AMPS. Sure AMPS kills you battery because it uses over a Watt vs a couple hundred mW for digital but at least I get reliable service. With Verizon I will have 3 out of 5 bar service and suddenly get "Signal faded call lost" on a bright sunny day! My experience with Cingular was even worse, not so sure i'm happy that they bought ATTWS. That and the local ATTWS store has always been fairly prompt in providing service vs the 90 minute wait to pick up a repaired phone at Verizon.

An elegant solution to a vexing problem?

[jumpingfred]

I can't imagine paying for this service. Is it doing well in Europe?

Re:I SMOKE POLE

[Anonymous Coward]

what are you doing after work?

Re:this can't possibly work for the stuff i listen

[electrichamster]

No seriously, I've tried this on some really random music and it generally gets it right.
For example, I tried it on a bit of music in the film "The Shawshank Redemption", and it correctly named it as being composed *for* the film - and named it too (it was something like "Shawshank prison music").

It made me go "ooooh", big time.

Someone's been reading...

[AllenChristopher]

Someone's been reading Reinventing Comics, by Scott McCleod... Just look at this Particularly page 9.

Re:Someone's been reading...

[endquotedotcom]

See Xplane. They make those product tours. They're pretty brilliant.

Re:Someone's been reading...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's very interesting, thanks. I think the mods were nuts to hit you with an offtopic... Perhpas Offtopic could be replaced with "Not complaining about the uselessness of the thing covered in the newstory."

Anyway, I'll click AC to avoid your fate, but wanted you to know you helped me out.

Re:Someone's been reading...

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, they are good

Re:Someone's been reading...

[ozbon]

Maybe so, but it's been available here in the UK for about a year or 18 months now. Dial 2580 (conveniently, the middle column of numbers on most mobile keypads), hold phone to speaker, and it identifies the music. I've used it even in nightclubs etc., and it's pretty much spot on.

Re:Someone's been reading...

[Lord_Dweomer]

While I'm sure the service is great in the UK for clubs, because you guys have a much larger market for electronic music, I'm not so sure it will be the same in the states. I mean given our corporations, one would figure they would only limit the service to identifying the latest Top 40, and everything else would give you a Top 40 recommendation when it couldn't find anything for you.

If you live in the UK.

[Mwongozi]

You can do this already! Hurrah!

Yeah, But does it...

[Oriumpor]

Run linux?... well not really, but the neuros does and HiSi for the neuros is free and allows you to record a 30 second clip (line-in/built in mic/FM radio) and then on synchronizing it goes out to the web and analyzes each recording and gives a result. As with any audio-fingerprinting it is innacurate, but i would imagine less innacurate than a 24khz+ cellphone connection.

Re:Yeah, But does it...

[DenialS]

Yes it does. Unfortunately the HiSi function for the Neuros is only supported under Windows, so I haven't tried it out. (Yup, staunch Linux/OGG person here.)

Still, posts on the Neuros forums (like this one) suggest that the feature works rather well. So you get unlimited uses of the ID feature for a $200 player--if you think you'll want to identify 200 songs over the course of a couple of years, that's like getting the Neuros player for free. Good deal.

And then afterwards

[Aexia]

You can try and figure out your cell phone company's new name!

AT&T Cingular?
Cingular Wireless?
AT&Cingular?

Or more likely, given that Cingular bought AWS...

Cingular's bitch

Re:And then afterwards

[skidoo2]

Or maybe, "SunCom, a member of the AT&T wireless network."

I'll take my Sprint-is-Sprint-is-Sprint any day of the week.

Probably never.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

More useless services from cellphone companies.

Like personalized ring tones and bust-your-thumbs instant messaging? B-)

They're TELEPHONE companies, dude!

They learned a long time ago that millions of customers dribbling in a buck here-and-there for "value added" services add up to BIG BUCKS! They COULD have provided this for free, as a convenient side-effect of the computers they used to cut the cost of their switching equipment. It's just a bunch of software hacks. But why give it away when they can CHARGE for it, and people are willing to PAY?

When will they get to lowering rates and giving cheap internet access? Hmm?

Cheap? Probably never. Or when they're going broke due to competition from other companies that ARE providing such a service cheaply. Even then they're probably price it at "all the traffic will bear" and count on their broad coverage to get them customers despite cheaper competition.

They WILL roll out non-cheap portable internet services - eventually. But don't hold your breath. Expect it to be folded into some other upgrade to their cell systems (like the upcoming move to QoS-enabled-IP based voice transport) rather than a standalone upgrade.

Good idea...

[punxking]

Next maybe AT&T wireless can come up with a feature where by holding up the phone when Gates or Ballmer start speaking on security, it can tell me what the %&$#* it is they're talking about.

...just a thought.

The 900 call problem all over again.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

If you have teenagers, have this service BLOCKED.

Re:The 900 call problem all over again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, heaven forbid you actually talk to them about something. Just go behind their backs and turn off anything you can. That should make them feel comfortable talking to you.

Re:The 900 call problem all over again.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Listen kiddo, when you pay for the phone you can bitch.

Thats not funny!

[mekkab]

I'd pay for software that could listen to music, tell me if I have it on MP3 or WAV or AAC or whatever (never mind that it was on a cd burned from this computer), and tell me where on my many hard drive partitions it was squirreled away!

Seriously, 200 GB with 10 partitions is more than enough rope to hang yourself.

Freakin' Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just now read the post, and I've got AT&T, so I figured I'd give it a shot... Nothing too obscure or anything, but it figured out that I was listening to Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt" with no problem. I say it's pretty darned neato.

$0.99/call (first one was free) though is a little steep... although if they can't figure out what song you're listening to, at least your next try is free.

Re:Freakin' Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah;

In case any one cares for details: The song has to play for 15 seconds, then you get a text message telling you what it was. Example, the text message I got back was:

MusicID--You just heard --Hurt-- by --Johnny Cash--

It came through almost immediately after the service "heard" the song.

MOD PARENT UP

[Arc04]

This is an amazing technique and has served me well hundreds of times. Just remember to put the lyric quote on speech marks and then lyrics outside of it. Put any other distinct words outside of the speech marks as well (not things like the, and etc). If you can't find it then remove the speech marks and remove common words until it is very distinct. Good luck, and it is free too!!

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

it works!

google found The Doors from the search of "father? yes son? lyrics"

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Myco]

I want to kill you.

singing in the shower

[hardaker]

so I wonder what it'll tell me about my rendition of "rubber ducky" while I take a shower?
it'd probably come back with "don't quit your day job" by "at&t".

AT&T sell it, not make it

[Albanach]

As some others have said, this technology has been around for a while now. Shazam were (iirc) the first to offer it in the UK. They charge 59p or about the same 99 cents. The Shazam service was covered in Scientific American in June 2003 and has been mentioned on /. a few times in the last year.

Better yet, image recognition...

[towerdave]

I saw somewhere today on the Wild Wild Web, a story about a similar service over in Europe where you take a picture with your cell phone, send it to some place, and they tell you where you are, if you get lost. It then could give you directions to where you were going. I wish I could find the link. It was a quick blurb somewhere.

TowerDave

Good for contests

[good-n-nappy]

The only real use for this is to win those contests on the radio where they play a 2 second snippet from a song and you have to guess what song it is.

I have to say though, that I pity anyway who actually participates in these contests.

Music ID Service... cool but give me display

[zakezuke]

Just about any form of digital music service is going to have a digital readout. It will tell you what the hell is playing. Analog radio is a touch diffrent, near as I'm aware there isn't really any form of track ID system.

While I'm all for a comercial application for researching audio recognition, this form of service would not be nessicary if songs were either watermarked or had some form of ID tag associated with them, and radios had some form of decoder and display. Even an old /. favorite "Digital Convergence" bringers of the CueCat understood the value of encoding text over analog audio systems.

Indie and other non-mainstream?

[RobertB-DC]

Interesting service, but how well will it work with independent, non-mainstream artists?

Susan Gibson wrote and originally recorded the song "Wide Open Spaces" It became a hit for the Dixie Chicks. What happens if I put the phone to the radio while a station that knows the difference is playing the original version?

Would an artist like Slaid Cleaves or Mark David Manders, which you won't hear on your local corporate country channel, even be identified?

I suspect the music library won't be broad enough to support the people who actually care about the music enough to use the service.

Re:Indie and other non-mainstream?

[yatest5]

a) WoW, you're just sO cOOl with YOur WeiRD and wonderFUL musIC TaSTes

b) Way to criticise something you haven't even tried yet

c) Your mythical supercool music afficinado would already be able to differentiate between this different songs, so wouldn't need this service

d)Since it differentiates between songs based on a digital comparison, there is as much difference between your lame-ass examples of covers and any other two totally different songs, so it's a totally irrelevant point posted solely to demonstrate how cool (!) you are.

Jesus Christ... just do what normal people do...

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Remember a few words of the lyrics.

2) Get song title by searing for above lyrics on Google, add "lyrics" to end of search string.

3) Load iTunes to sample song and check other songs by Artist.

4) Download song on favorite P2P network (see www.zeropaid.com for many).

Amazing..

[kiwioddBall]

I'm a tech, and I know that with most stuff on slashdot I can see how it works and how it would be implemented, but I can't see how with this.

If this was April 1st I would understand.

The article has been slashdotted so I can't read it - is there a tech article on the database or the technology behind this acheivement somewhere? A database which contains portions of every song would be fairly incredible, not to mention the fact that it is recognizing songs over a crackly phone line. Perhaps it is recognizing watermarking in the audio?

How does it handle sampling? If I was to play 'You can't touch this' by MC Hammer at it, and then play 'Superfreak' by 70's artist I don't remember, how does it know what song it is as one samples the other for fairly long portions?

More information is appreciated :)

Re:Amazing..

[Daneurysm]

I can't believe nobody said it yet, but...

Your "70's artist I don't remember" ???

It's Rick James, Bitch.

Re: It's not like nobody's doing this...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.kexp.org/playlist/playlist.asp

I guess they can do this because they're non-commercial, so they have no worries about commercial competition.

Here's the problem with this, IMHO...

[kclittle]

The times when I'd be willing to pay a $1 for someone to tell me the name of a piece of music are when I hear a fleeting snippet off of a TV or radio program. (NPR does this too me quite often!) There's no way I'd have time to place the call.

Are there..

[jvagner]

..songs on the radio that one might not know the name of?

Will they be able to identify songs played on, say, KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic?

Will it work if I'm streaming that show over the internet and hold my phone up to the computer speaker?

Does this tell you anything?

[David Hume]

Does the following tell you anything? (I'll leave it to the reader to decide "about what"... if anything.)

Trial 1
Artist:Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Song Title: By the Way
Quality: CD
Environment: Office
Record Time: 22 seconds
Response Time: 14 seconds
Verdict: Correct

Trial 2
Artist: Ludacris
Song Title: What's Your Fantasy
Quality: CD
Environment: Office
Record Time: 18 seconds
Response Time: 16 seconds
Verdict: Correct

Trial 3
Artist: AC/DC
Song Title: You Shook Me All Night Long
Quality: Radio
Environment: Car
Record Time: 25 seconds
Response Time: 15 seconds
Verdict: Correct

Trial 4
Artist: Mary Wells
Song Title: My Guy
Quality: Radio
Environment: Car
Record Time: 17 seconds
Response Time: 18 seconds
Verdict: Correct

Trial 5
Artist: Beethoven
Song Title: Moonlight Sonata
Quality: CD
Environment: Office
Record Time: 24 Seconds
Response Time: About 3 Minutes
Verdict: STUMPED

Let's see. Red Hot Chilli Peppers, yep. Ludacris, of course. AC/DC (even on the radio), check. Mary Wells (also on the radio), good to go.

Beethoven? Who the hell? "Moonlight Sonata???" Sure it was CD quality, but... Beethoven?

Re:Does this tell you anything?

[Soporific]

I'd bet it had trouble differentiating it from the 8 zillion different recordings of Moonlight Sonata. It is still interesting though.

~S

Re:Does this tell you anything?

[Polymath Crowbane]

I'd be willing to bet the service has a minimal amount of classical music in their database. Of course, it could simply be they don't have room for such an obscure piece of music as the "Moonlight Sonata."

The sad part is that there are many times I hear a piece of classical music on the radio and would gladly pay $0.99 to find out what it is, especially when I'm on the road and likely to be out of range of the station before it's finished. I suspect there are other classical listeners in the same boat, and with disposable income for such a service.

Re:Does this tell you anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the recording industry, classical music is treated very differently from just about everything else. As a whole, it likely isn't in Shazam's database. I'm sure they're making steps to add it, but it's not Shazam's fault they don't have that piece of content.

Re:Does this tell you anything?

[dmccarty]

Just about anyone with any background in classical music would know that that was Moonlight Sonata. I took a few years of piano and can even play a few bars. It's not "incredibly difficult" to place, as the review stated. On the contrary, it's a very recognizable piece of work.

Re:Does this tell you anything?

[arafel]

From playing around with Shazam here, I suspect that it makes quite strong use of vocals to try and identify songs. Classical tracks don't often have vocals...

Disclaimer: I'm just guessing here. But Shazam's been very reliable for me for most songs, except those without singing. (Or really obscure ones.)

Actually, I think they applied for a patent on it, so you could always look it up at the patent office. :-)

Re:Does this tell you anything?

[Unknown Kadath]

Moonlight Sonata? "Obscure?" That was a joke, yes?

-Carolyn

Re:Does this tell you anything?

[Polymath Crowbane]

It was a joke, yes. Unfortuantely, there is no HTML for "tongue-firmly-imbedded-in-cheek."

Of course, this being /., I suspect the majority of people reading this would need to use the service to identify Beethoven's Piano Sonata in c#.

Re:Does this tell you anything?

[Unknown Kadath]

Okay, just checking. Otherwise, I was going to have to cry.

That said, I think most people would recognize Moonlight Sonata (and several dozen other classical pieces), but not be able to put a name to 'em. Which is what this service is supposed to do...but it will take away one of my sources of trivia cred if it works. "What's that beef music?" "Rodeo, you philistine."

-Carolyn

Re:Does this tell you anything?

[Polymath Crowbane]

At this moment, the channel on Live365 to which I'm listening is playing Cage's 4'33". I wonder if the service would recognize that.

Re:Does this tell you anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

it doesnt identify classical music - but classical music is usually in a different catalog than regular music

do you ever hear classical in clubs?

Re:Does this tell you anything?

[Unknown Kadath]

Ah, yes. 4'33". Similar to my opus "Dead Air," which I play all the time on my cell phone. Mine is a fugue, though, because it keeps happening. ;)

-Carolyn

Re:Does this tell you anything?

[Polymath Crowbane]

Mine is a fugue, though, because it keeps happening. ;)

Actually, that would make it a ground, or, if you're cursing over the dead air, a passacaglia.

Re:Does this tell you anything?

[Unknown Kadath]

I bow to your superior knowledge of musical forms. :D

-Carolyn

Re:Does this tell you anything?

[Polymath Crowbane]

And I bow to your choice of a good Lovecraftian place name. May your dream quests be always successful.

so glad you could make it, now you really made it

[rokzy]

>Now you can finally figure out the name of that song on the radio that you've been dying to know!

er, been doing that for years in UK with Shazzam Song Recognition thank you.

Is a computer really IDing it?

[ism]

I just figure they'd outsource it to India and have Indians ID the songs. Just have each Indian listen to one genre of music, weighted by popularity and likelyhood to come up. You can probably attach 3 people to each ID session -- pop/rock, country, and hip-hop and if they can't ID it, pass it on to the next tier of IDers. It would probably still be cheaper than audio fingerprinting, considering how distorted the music must be.

Re:Is a computer really IDing it?

[Mindwurkz]

It'd be an even better solution, you could sing, or whistle, or anything and they could try to identify it from what you gave them. This could work... time to start drafting up a business model.... Hope it works better than my last one. 1. Destroy Iraq. 2. ???? 3. Profit.

Best part

[empaler]

Wanna bet they're making the record companies pay as well?

Pick up the pieces

[nightsweat]

The name of the song is "Pick up the Pieces". There, I just saved you a call.

Good News for Napster...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now Napster has the tech to make sure its not hosting copyrighted music... oh wait...

Not that new

[nezroy]

My Neuros MP3/OGG player has been able to do this for a year.

Seal: Kiss From a Rose

[Anonymous Coward]

To be technical, it starts out: "Ba ba baa, b-ba ba ba ba baa baa ba ba baa".

Thank you, that'll be 99 cents please.

Um why?

[tomstdenis]

I really am not going to race to my cell phone to pay someone to tell me what annoying song is on the radio. If it's mainstream radio it will be on 3599 more times during the same day. If it's NPR than I'll just call them and ask.

Man oh man are people gullible. I guess that includes me for having a cell phone but at least it doesn't cost much and I can rationalize it.

Tom

doesn't help for instrumental pieces

[Reneumann]

I have been doing that for years too (finding music by googling the lyrics) and didn't think I was particularly clever for it :-/ But it's no help for songs without lyrics, while the AT&T service should be.

And is there a proggie to identify MIDI songs (can't use the MP3 fingerprint proggies on those)? Or if anyone can identify this song, can you please tell me what it is? I know I've heard it in the past in several contexts, but I don't know what it is, the filename ("big.mid") is useless, and random strangers haven't been able to identify it for me :(

Re:doesn't help for instrumental pieces

[SmittyTheBold]

Sorry, can't identify it. It doesn't even sound vaguely familiar, which leads me to believe it's not a product of the past 20 years or so.

Re:doesn't help for instrumental pieces

[Psychic Burrito]

Sounds very much like seventies to me... take a look at the rhytmic sforzando accents of Barry Ryan's Eloise and the fanfare-like soundtracks for Dallas and Dynasty.

Of course, there are millions of songs that never became very popular. Heck, there might be zero information about your sample on the internet. You might ask some DJ of some 70/80s station instead, don't know.

Cheers!

Re:doesn't help for instrumental pieces

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds to me like a (badly rendered) theme to a western movie or TV show. Have you looked along that line?

Re:doesn't help for instrumental pieces

[Reneumann]

Actually the most recent place I've heard it (a year or so ago) is in the music between commercials for the G. Gordon Liddy radio talk show, though I'm a bit loathe to acknowledge that :-/ But no one I've spoken to there knows what it is either, even though they play it regularly.

In my weak defense, it sounds much much better in the non-MIDI version.

Cellular add-ons

[huie]

It's stuff like this (value added services?), Cingular's comics and instant messaging that are turning cell phones into more than just a handset you talk into.

I like it, but I fear that it'll get to the point where it's too hard to figure out how to access a given extra feature. Obviously they'll have to work on the UI to select from all these (marginally) useful features.

That said, I'm still just using my phone as a phone, so maybe they already have that solved, but I wouldn't know.

Already been done

[holizz]

In the UK at least

Karaoke

[Anonymous Coward]

YES! Now I can do a new form of Karaoke singing at the phone... if I am good enough AT&T will recognize what I am singing.

Welcome to two years ago

[caek]

Old news.

What's next? Text messages? Ring tones? The telegraph?

It works for non-major labels. amazing.

[Anonymous Coward]

So I tried this on Less Than Jake's Johnny Quest Thinks We're Sellouts hoping it would fail on an indy label artist and I could rant and rave about the RIAA locking out indy artists, but then it goes and fucking works.

too bad, i was really hoping to get the next call free thing forever.

Wonderful...

[zokrath]

Now we can have morons holding one phone up to the radio, while talking to their friends on a second phone about the song they are listening to, and driving with their knees.

As previously concluded above, the service is overpriced for something that google provides for free form the safety of your own home.

Although, we might get osme interesting stories about wrecks caused by people trying to figure out the name of that song about "Dead Man's Curve"...

Crying Strippers

[The-Dalai-LLama]

Regarding your sig: A lapdance is so much better when the stripper is crying...

I think Peter Hand may have borrowed the phrase from The Bloodhound Gang. My copy of the liner notes is in my car with my chick at my kid's soccer practice, so I can't check, but the complete song lyrics can be found on their site. The song is great. It's on "Hooray for Boobies", a truly masterful album that also contains "The Ballad of Chasey Lain" and "The Bad Touch" (a song for which the AT&T service would be useful, since everybody always tries to find it under "The Discovery Channel Song" or something similar).

The Dalai LLama
"Would I be a good messiah with my low self esteem? If I don't believe in myself, would that be blasphemy?" - The Bloodhound Gang

This is not the first....

[Anonymous Coward]

...service which does this. I'm surprised it took AT&T this long to implement it.

I'll be even more surprised if there isn't a patent clash.

language

[poptones]

What do you do when the song is in a language you don't understand? Pretty hard to remember those lyrics, much less type them into google.

Most of the music I buy is from other parts of the world. I count on altavista to provide me roughly translated lyrics if I can't find them elsewhere, but that wouldn't help me identify the tracks to know what to look for.

Google "ooooh, oooh, oooh, oooh, willa happy oooh, willa happy garrrl, willa happy ooohhh..."

Only in russian. Got any ideas?*

*See popular dance club track "Arabika" by Hi-Fi

I tried giving it silence

[Anonymous Coward]

... and it reported back "John Cage, 4'33"".

Eeeerie!

Re:I tried giving it silence

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, that's great. Wonderful. Mod 'em if ya got 'em.

Missing something

[Paladin144]

I think many of you are missing something, but it's also possible that you don't listen to a lot of obscure music. Sure, I listen to all the latest rock music, but I also like to listen to our local classical music channel here in MN, 99.5 FM.

I love classical, but it's a real bitch figuring out the song names. Hell, most of the time it's something like: "Concerto No. 432, Op. 5341: Andante con margarine" or something equally lame. If this service could help me out with that, it would be worth a buck to me.

I've listened to brilliant classical works, and then the announcer comes on and says (in his heavily-tranquilized drawl) a bunch of words I've never freaking heard before. No doubt it's the name of some obscure foreign composer and the foreign conductor and the foreign symphony that played the tune, which has a name derived from latin. Great. That fucking helps me a bunch.

Oh, and that's another thing; the songs can go on forever. If he plays 3 or 4 movements it can easily be a half hour. Don't get me wrong; I love the station (no commercials!), and I love classical music, but can this service really tell the difference between Handel and Mozart? And for that matter, can it tell me which movement, and who is conducting? Please excuse my skepticism, but I seriously fucking doubt it. The idea is great, and it's useful to me since my tastes range from pop to ultra-obscure, but does it work?

Re:Missing something

[Halfbaked Plan]

I used to be able to accurately tell the difference between Mozart and Haydn, but it's been awhile since I tried to know if I still can.

Re:Missing something

[protohiro1]

Well, this thing is blowing my mind and i just wasted some money testing it. It got a lot of stuff. It it didn't get Puffy AmiYumi or the sounds, but it did get Bei Mir Bist du Shon by Glen Miller and the Andrews Sisters.

I suppose it works by keeping the recording in the database, grabbing a snippet of the song and then using some sort of algorithm to cut out identifying marks and then searching the database for songs that match. Its sort of useless but its a really cool hack. It didn't get the Dvorak I played it. I think it probably needs to have the actual recording in the database. Not magic, but cool nonetheless.

P. Diddy

[hawkbug]

If P. Diddy keeps ripping off every artist under the sun without changing the beats at all, AT&T won't know what to do! :) I can't imagine this service will work very well if you feed it one of this songs...

Re:Jesus Christ... just do what normal people do..

[Mindwurkz]

What if you're listening to songs in a foreign language? or Opera? I doubt the service can identify them properly right now, but I once spent hours trying to identify Pagliacci's "Vesti La Giubba".

Much easier way

[Killswitch1968]

If you have an internet connection, by far the easiest way to identify a song is to google one of the lyrics, example:
And when I touch you..."

who listens to commercial radio

[p51d007]

I quit listening to commercial music radio almost a year ago. They kept interrupting the commercials with music ;)
I like XM better, it shows you what the song is.
And, NO STINKING COMMERCIALS (on the music channels that is).
And, for my peace of mind, it's DEFINATELY worth
9.99 per month

Music Analysis Toolkit

[william_lorenz]

A friend of mine was working on the Music Analysis Toolkit (MAT) while he was still thinking of pursuing his Ph.D. in Computer Science. The toolkit does just this kind of music recognition stuff, and he was working a lot with the psychoacoustic model and using LAME to filter out inaudible stuff. It's been a while since I've talked with him about it, but it's definately interesting.

I'd be willing to bet this is based on lots of the same stuff.

Fails

[_ph1ux_]

Every time I try to ID this one song, it fails.

I can remember what its called, just that its by a guy named John Cage - and is about 4 and a half minutes long...

Re:Fails

[kisielk]

For anyone who doesn't get this joke, it's about a "song" John Cage uh.. wrote.. called 4'33" which is just 4:33 of silence. There was a lawsuit
regarding the piece when another composer made a song that was one minute of silence. I think there was a /. story regarding this, but I couldn't find it.

Neat!

[cjpez]

Way cool! Of course, you could always, say, wait for the DJ to just tell you what the song was. Or, if they don't announce songs, they're probably on one of the bigger stations, so they've probably got "currently playing" lists on the web. Or, you know, a lot of stations have IM/email set up...

Still, fun technology. What would be more useful is a service that could listen to you hum or whistle tunelessly for a minute or two and figure out the song title from that.

need to find a good DJ

[morgajel]

it all depends on the DJ. about 10 years ago a local rock station had a kickass DJ named Carlito. He had one of the night shows, and was amusing as hell. The radio station eventually changed format to classic rock because they broughr in a local DJ(Tim and Deb) from the competition who was supposed to be the "best in the area" and he didn't like "devil music".
(yes, he actually called it that. I woke up to hearing him explain the change in format and that "we got rid of their devil music too!")

I never found out what happened to Carlito... my brother told me that after a while he had locked himself in the studio and refused to get out of it until Metalica called in and explained why their new CD sucked so badly... supposedly he was fired for it. don't know if it was the same station or not.

if anyone is from the Lansing,MI area and knows what really happened to carlito, I'd like to hear it.

It's Unlikely that it Would Work for Me

[Trolling4Dollars]

Just this morning, I was listening to good radio (a college station as the commercial stations play total crap now) and I heard a really well done cover of a Smiths song. It came from an obscure Smiths cover CD and was performed by a band that only has one listing on IMDB. I think you'd be hard pressed (no pun intended) to use this service to find out what song that was. More than likely it will only recognize the hottest "hits" by the latest "artists". So... that means it will succeed with the target demographic: bored teens, boring young adults, and virtually braindead 30-somethings. How distressing.

Can't Buy It....

[Anonymous Coward]

...dude, if you can IDENTIFY it!

Are you having one of those "DUH" moments?

I thought so.

The Neuros MP3 player..

[bishiraver]

has had this functionality since it comes out. You can press a button on it, and it will record a 30 second clip from the radio, line in, or mic. The next time you sync with your organization utility on your PC, it copies the 30 second clip over and uses a technology like this to identify the clip. It works pretty well, too.

EULA

[Michael Woodhams]

But will the EULAs on new songs allow AT&T to add them to their database?

(Woohoo - EULAs and music copyright - karma whoring, here I come!)

Re:this can't possibly work for the stuff i listen

[Elwood P Dowd]

The Shawshank redemption is the most popular "favorite movie" among IMDB poll takers.

I'd suggest it might be the most popular movie in America. Hopefully the rest of the world has better taste.

Not exactly obscure.

Remember lyrics.ch?

[Atario]

Remember? Back before they became one of the first casualties of the IP blitzkreig? Ahh, the good old days.

Well, you're right. I do the same thing you do: "Lyrics" + words + Google = you found the song. HOWEVER. You're screwed if the song you're looking for has no lyrics. "Walk, Don't Run" by The Ventures? "Green Onions" by Booker T. & The MG's? "Take Five" by Dave Brubeck? Even the article's example of "Moonlight Sonata" by Ludwig Von Beethoven? Sorry, no help from Google.

(Not to mention what happens when the song has lyrics, but you can't understand anything the singer sings.)

Anyway, this service is a nifty trick...as long as you can invoke it while listening to the song.

Wake me when you can hum it and get the right answer.

Re:Remember lyrics.ch?

[Anonymous Coward]

Best. Sig. Ever. ROTFL

Anybody tried it yet?

[UltraMagic]

Has anybody given this service a try yet? Does it work?

lame and old

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, having worked in the wireless industry, they've been trying to get this concept to pay off since 1999. It didn't work then and won't work now. It's not going to make enough money to pay for itself. First the radio would have to play music people want, which apparently isn't reality today. Two, how many people listen to the radio at work? The only places people listen to the radio is in the car, or at home. Over generalizing of course.

Re:this can't possibly work for the stuff i listen

[electrichamster]

My point was that it was from a movie score, and thereby not something you would expect a service like this to cover - but whatever :)

uh...

[Chuck Bucket]

it's a bit late for April fools jokes, don't ya think? Is this true, now we can figure out that crappy song on the radios name? Fantastic. As usual, no cure for cancer.

CB

Already in Spain for about a year now

[JackRabbitSlims]

One of the three GSM operators in spain, Amena, launched this service for about a year now.
It is called cazacanciones (song catcher) and when recognized you can even get your song as a ring tone for your mobile or buy it (this last option only if it's in the top 40 list of the moment)

As for the success rate of the recognition, I've always been quite doubtfull for anything but a clean recording out of a home stereo and popular music (as opposed to a typical situation in a noisy pub with a not so known song)

Re:this can't possibly work for the stuff i listen

[rufo]

So just out of curiosity, for those people who like the Shawshank Redemption what movie would you recommend in its stead?

I'm just curious, no hostility meant or anything. :-)

The Mac OS X installation music!

[Mr. Spleen]

I know that 10.1 and Jaguar had the Dorfmeister remix of Sofa Rockers, by the Sofa Surfers, from the K&D Sessions album. Now I can finally find out what the music is that plays after Panther installs and it goes to the registration screen!

Oh, wait, who cares.

Mr. Spleen

Re:The Mac OS X installation music!

[krusader]

Royskopp - Eple is the tune Panther plays at the registration step

Why is this useful?

[Tired and Emotional]

The only time this would be useful is if you were listening to something on commercial radio and it was interesting enough that you just had to know what it was.

So are they going to buy commercial radio stations and make them start playing interesting music? If so I like this business model - give people something for free and try to do a good enough job that they want to give you money.

Just tried it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just tried it with:
PJ Harvey / Stories from the City / Track 7 / This Mess We're In

And it failed. This was in a quite room and I held the phone ~4" from the speaker.

The first time you try the service it is free and if it fails you it's free the next time you use it as well... I can't see people spending 99 cents for the service, but I can't see people spending 3 cents a KB for data service or 10 cents for a fscking text message either...

Save your money...

[kitzilla]

The song you're hearing on the radio is almost certainly "Toxic" by Britney Spears, playing 24/7 on almost every station from coast to coast.

See? Ya saved a buck. It pays to read Slashdot.

Licencing technology from shazam?

[Wolflord]

I wonder if AT&T have licenced technology from shazam. More about their technology here.

Re:this can't possibly work for the stuff i listen

[Anonymous Coward]

So just out of curiosity, for those people who like the Shawshank Redemption what movie would you recommend in its stead?

The Green Mile. duh.

I wonder what the limits and guarentees are

[UltimaL337Star]

For instance there's an AT&T mlife commercial where a father slides a phone under his daughter's door and there's a song in the backround. If you contact AT&T, and actually get a reply, all they'll tell you will be something around, "That particular song was created especially for that commercial". No song name, no Author. Try searching it, I dare you all!

Hey, can they do that?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I play a song from my XM Satellite radio over my phone to their service, and they sample it as part of the identification process, shouldn't some copyright enforcement group just be all over them for "stealing"?

"If it can't guess the song, then your next call is free."

So doesn't that actually mean they just profited off the song that's not in their database, which means they're not even close to having any license of the song?

Fair use is only fair for the big boys, I guess.

As if the roads weren't dangerous enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

...now people will go fumbling for their cell phones, dialing the service, turning up the radio, and holding the phone to the speakers, just 'cause they gotta know the name of Britney's new single! Thanks, AT&T!

Tribute bands?

[Gudlyf]

I wonder how well this would work in a concert or what happens if you play a tribute band's tunes through it. Hell, what if you actually sang into the phone? I'm frightened at the possibilities.

I don't listen to radio

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't listen to radio you insensitive clod! As neat as the idea is, I find it unlikely I'll have any use for it deciphering underground music sources

Re:I don't listen to radio

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 informative???

Re:this can't possibly work for the stuff i listen

[Elwood P Dowd]

The Green Mile. No, no. Just kidding. I don't like The Usual Suspects, either. I'm just not into payoff movies. I need more than cleverness. It feels cheap.

If you want a movie that all turns around at the end, and has plenty of high style, I'd vote for China Town.

I recently made up a list of favorite movies, none of which are analogous to Shawshank. But here you go:
Dog Star Man, Starman, Spider-man,
The Rules of the Game, Throne of Blood, Philadelphia Story,
Queen Margot, Bound, Secretary,
Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway,
Blue, White, Red,
Risky Business, Groundhog Day, Roger Rabbit

get xm radio

[Anonymous Coward]

get xm radio and you can get good non-soccermom country music and the name of the artist and song are displayed with every song

So, wait...

[macemoneta]

What AT&T is saying is that they want you to upload copyrighted music to them? Does the RIAA know about this? I have a feeling this serice isn't going to be around much longer...

Here's one where you can simply sing into it.

[dbloodnok]

Here and here

I saw a demo of this a few years ago when I was studying at Waikato Uni. Very impressive, if you can get over feeling like an idiot singing to a machine.

Is This A Cool Idea?

[Master of Transhuman]

No.

Fucking braindead.

Totally useless.

Idiotic.

Some marketing clown's idea.

A ploy to suck money out of people.

A waste of bandwidth.

Only a Geek Moron could love this.

um, ya

[bobsledbob]

Now you can finally figure out the name of that song on the radio that you've been dying to know!

Ha ha, ho ho, tee hee. Something on the radio worth dying for? Good one, I needed a laugh.

Re:this can't possibly work for the stuff i listen

[Anonymous Coward]

we tried it with some obscure punk rock here (germany) and it worked. i think they have more than 250.000 songs, and of course keep extending it.

just wait a bit and check it for yourself. you won't be able to resist testing that technology anyway...

useless modulation

[PhreakOfTime]

This is useless. Instead of looking at this as some kind of great idea, can we all realize its more telling of the shortcomings of FM radio. If I want to know the name of a song thats on my radio, I look down at the display and it tells me. Yes, its satradio. But I havent listened to FM since the day I bought it and realized Im not missing a damn thing but ultra-edited music and stations that cut out saying the name of a song because its

To me the bigger story is the fact that FM is pretty much the oldest technology around still being used, ok AM, but theres not much music around on that anymore. In fact FM is such an old technology, things like your PHONE can now be used to supplement it...ummm what?

Abstract for Technology Talk

[em.a18]

The technology behind this service was described by Avery Wang in a Stanford Hearing Seminar talk. See the abstract at the UCSC archive .

I'm pretty sure there are some patents in Avery's name covering the same technology. They should be public now. (I don't know how closely the patents describe the product they offer.)

- Malcolm

why bother?

[grepistan]

Look, if you want to find out what's playing on commercial radio at any given time, simply examine the current music charts and pick at random from them... failing that, stairway to heaven or hotel california is always a good bet. Australian radio sure does suck, but from what I've heard its even worse in the states!

There are other ways...

[slaad]

Now you can finally figure out the name of that song on the radio that you've been dying to know!

We've had a way to do that for years, it's called google. Just remember half a line from the song and you'll find it.

This is something that always used to wish existed before google (or perhaps just the web in general). This should be very useful because it's easy to use and very portable. On the other hand, I don't have an AT&T cell phone, so for now I'll just stick to google.

Just find something new to pierce.

[Anonymous Coward]

this can't possibly work for the stuff i listen to

Yes, I'm sure it would be heartbreaking for you to discover that your edgey musical tastes aren't obscure enough.

If it -did- successfully identify your taste, and thus brought you closer to the mainstream, you might have to grow some radically new configuration of facial hair to compensate.

Can't let The Man(tm) get too close...

w00t!

[Saturninus]

Now I really am living in the 21st century! What next? Flying cars?!?

Download

[WhatsAProGingrass]

Great, now we can all just pay $.99 cents to know the name of a song, then go download it for another $.99. AT&T should target the p2p genre and get people to pay them for all the music they are stealing. Seriously, I think this is a great idea. I never know the names of songs when I hear them.

Karaoke Contest...

[kirk444]

See how close your singing really is to your favorite stars.... Sing into your phone with some background music... see if you get recognized! (If you happen to have too much time and money, that is)

Already in Switzerland for about one year

[Azurstorm]

On the Sunrise Network in Switzerland, we have a similar service called "Musicfinder" (in Switzerland the number is +41763332233). But you can use it from any Swiss operator. It exists for one year now and I'm a little surprised that it is coming so late in USA, but I know that Switzerland (as Monaco) is often used for test purposes. And Europe is more "mobile phone" addicted than USA... I've tested it on many occasion and I must admit that it is impressive, on television, radio and even sometimes in Pub, I've near always a correct answer. The database makes by a shop called "CityDisc", a (very) large amount of CD have been digitalised and stored in a huge database with a checksum system. Very efficient, very cool and for one time: not too expensive! ;)

Who said anything about radio?

[arafel]

Because if I'm in a club and they're playing a song, having a car radio with me doesn't help much.

Verizon

[j.bellone]

Yeah, now when Verizon comes out with something like this it'll be like the text-messages: "You get 10 free music identifier calls, after that, they are only .10 cents per song." Small bold print at the bottom of the ad: "A minimum of 1,000 songs will be billed to your account each month."

The technology behind this

[M100]

Unless AT&T have come up with their own algorithms, this is probably a re-selling of the service from Shazamentertainment who have several over mobile operators on their books. They use a proprietary pattern recognition technology (patent-pending) that can identify recorded audio even under noisy conditions. The Shazam service runs on a hosted service platform and is driven by Europe's largest music information database - over 1,600,000 music tracks, metadata and cover art - that was built by Shazam.

AT&T Wireless is the Worst Cel Service Out The

[SkipNewarkDE]

Regardless of this technology, AT&T Wireless has got to concentrate on some very basic services, such as area coverage, quality of signal, and most importantly, customer service. AT&T will happily sell a phone to its customer that will not work correctly in the customer's service area, and then refuse to replace the phone with a different model WITHOUT charging an additional fee. AT&T's GSM network is incredibly spotty, and the signal quality is so poor as to be unlistenable. AT&T has the worst customer service department. For a detailed diatribe on my personal experiences with this terrible company, see: Why I Hate AT&T Wireless If you wish to escalate your service request or complaint, this must be done in writing, via SNAIL MAIL. This company loses some 49% of its customers each year, after their contract is up. They should concentrate less on gimmicky technology, and more on these issues.

Re:this can't possibly work for the stuff i listen

[Chris Pimlott]

Probably track 2, "Shawshank Prison (Stoic Theme)".

Excellent soundtrack, but don't listen to it if you're already feeling a bit depressed.