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

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.

[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.

[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.

[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?

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!

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.

[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

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

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: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.

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?

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.