Slashdot Mirror
New Phone Service Promises to ID Songs
Coolnat2004 writes "Ever get a song stuck in your head, but you missed the DJ announcement of the song name? That's the idea powering a new cell phone-based service called 411-SONG. Just call 866-411-SONG, and hold your phone up to the speaker. 15 seconds later the call ends and the information on your song is displayed on your phone's screen. This comes at a price, though. 99 cents for your first 5 songs, and then 99 cents a song after that. However, nbc4.com reports that a subscription model may be coming soon. Wouldn't this technology be great for fixing up all those ID3 tags?"
So... now it costs as much to figure out what a song is as to buy it? No thanks.
This type of service been available in the uk for a few years now with shazam, it works reasonably well for currently popular songs, fairs a bit oddly with some older stuff though.
:)
I have actually used it for mp3 tagging too
There have been services like this around for years. When I got a new cell phone a few months ago it came with advertising for just such a service, and I had heard about such services ages before that.
Wouldn't this technology be great for fixing up all those ID3 tags?"
.99$ a pop. I'm surprised google hasn't done something like this, though.
Not at
Wouldn't this technology be great for fixing up all those ID3 tags? MusicBrainz
Well with google you can already do this for free. However, the catch is that you need good enough pitch to know what the notes are. But if you can get them (or close enough), then you can type them in to get the song.
AT&T Wireless did this a year ago. See http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/340/C2723/ for a typical summary
unless this is a year old news story...
I think its #DJ on Fido and Roger's Networks. Don't know if Telus or Bell have it yet...
Think of the *insertevilnesslevelhere* possibities.
They know your phone #, they know what song you are listening to, the probably know what radio station is playing the song, and they can find out your address and probably your name.
If they don't have a good privacy policy, I won't be using their service.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"This comes at a price, though. 99 cents for your first 5 songs, and then 99 cents a song after that. However, Wouldn't this technology be great for fixing up all those ID3 tags?""
Ahh, yeah? Brilliant if you own stock in AT&T maybe...
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
AT&T Wireless has had its own version of this for a while now, #ID. http://www.wirelessweek.com/article/CA521810.html. Looks like this offering is from MusiKube as mentioned in the linked article.
Note that from a PC you could always use http://www.musicbrainz.org/ if you're trying to fix those ID3 tags.
BFor $13 a month, I'll just stick to XM Radio... it shows me the title and artist of the song I'm listening to. It can even record that info so that I can go back to it later and buy the song or album when I get home. Sure, it won't identify arbitrary music (just the song currently playing on the tuned station), but it seems like the only time I try to figure out the name of a song is when I'm listening to it on the radio.
The RIAA will send you a writ of suit asking $30,000 for violating their copyright.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Wouldn't this technology be great for fixing up all those ID3 tags?"
Well, another great way to accomplish this is to just have one piece of information, such as the artists name or song name, or even album and type it into Google. But if you are really desperate, you can just Google the lyrics or a catch phrase in the lyrics. It's simple, really.
Pat
I am waiting for the service that allows you to hold your camera phone up to your computer screen and it tells you if the slashdot article is a dupe. (which this one is)
While a service like this is truly incredible, as people from the UK (who have had it for a few years) have pointed out, these services usually only work on "popular" songs. Songs that probably get played twenty times a day on U.S. top-40 radio, with oppertunities to find out the name quite often.
The branches of music this would be most useful for (Indie Rock, Electronic, Jazz and Classical) are unfortunately the ones the system will rarely recognize.
easy and free: figure out a few words in sequence, enter them into google using quotes, add the word lyrics outside teh quotes, and you can usually get the full song info quite easily.
if the song is stuck in your head, lyrics should be little trouble
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
http://www.shazam.com/uk/do/home
Up here in Canada, both Rogers Wireless and Fido have been offering #DJ (#35) from your cell phone to look up songs. It will text message you the song, and also allow ringtone downloads if they are found.
Bssgbcvp? Fghcvq zbqrengbef, vg'f zber yvxr synzronvg.
nothing more.
Also, I didn't see where the cost was free if it mis-identified your song, or how to request a refund, for that matter.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I know this may sound redundant but wouldn't it be much easier to just GOOGLE the lyrics of the song and wait for results? While you may not always be near a computer with internet access (well with more and more cell phones offering internet access, it is much easier) that maybe the time where that service come useful for one.
- Teja
Sure, there have been times when I've wanted to know the name of the song I was listening to. Usually I just jot down some of the lyrics and if I really cared I google for the song later. For free. and in the rare case that the song isn't online (indie band) then I highly doubt 411SONG will know it either.
I can only see this as a bad thing. How many people will end up in car accidents because they pull out their phone while driving and reach to hold the phone to the speaker, then look at the phone and read what it is. Its likely that most people won't care that much and will hear it again on the radio. I doubt this service will be able to ID songs that aren't in the top of their respective charts.
Unless the advertise this on MTV or another popular TV station, I can't see this service really taking off. I have a feeling most people would rather buy the song off iTunes than find out who performs it for the same price.
Then again, you could take that 99 and use it to buy the song on iTunes and own it legally.
But you have to figure out what the song is first!
They will never be able to build a big enough user base charging $0.99 just to identify a song. If they were smart/could get the rights they should set it up so that the service IDs the song and *sells you a copy* for something like $1.50. That makes the transaction way more useful and fun for the user, and the service gets to keep the 50 cents convenience fee. Doing this way in my opinion is a recipe for failure and probably isn't financially viable.
It would've been more appropriate for them to buy 8675309...
Stewie: Ok now home number... oh yes. 8675309.. *ring ring* Wait that's not it. DAMN YOU TOMMY TWO TONE!
A couple of things: (I actually had been thinking about this service the other day -- I had seen it demo'ed on TV quite a while ago. I thought it was interesting and had just been wondering what had happened to the concept. I never missed it, just thought it was interesting, for a couple of reasons:
Bottom line for me -- I don't need it.... Sometimes I feel like we're turning into a world that's a microwave oven with 100 power level settings! And just how many power level settings do we really need to live healthy, productive, and fulfilling lives?
There are two known ways to get rid of them:
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
there is a program called MusicBrainz tagger, and you can download it and run it agains all your mp3s to tag them properly http://www.musicbrainz.org/ it uses each mp3's digital signature to do this, and works fairly well, though if most of your songs are off p2p and not ripped cds, it has more trouble due to crappy variations..
How the hell can I get funding for my dumnbass ideas???
"idea powering"?
this idea couldn't power a mouse to lick his ass.
The idjits obviously never bother to listen to the radio. The DJ doesn't say, "and now feast your ears on this latest from Captain Beefheart"
No, he waits until the end of play or maybe a few plays and then announces, "you've just heard Blind Willy McFee singing 'Short Irish Girl Blues'. which was preceeded by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans singing that old favorite 'Trigger Braunsweiger, It Be da Best' and preceeding that the Opossum Brothers instrumental version of 'Wild Wood Weed'".
But if you can't waut for the DeeJay, pray tell, how the hell is the service gonna distinguish between the 103 different covers of Ring of Fire or 88 covers of Ghost Riders in The Sky???
No, I'm New Here
Gee... they could have made a game show of that.
Oh... wait...
Well, Media Tagger works wonderfully well with freedb.org. But yeah, for those rest 10%, this may be helpful.
Well, this 411 service for music has been around since January, and suddenly NOW slashdot picks up on it?
C'mon guys.
Go ahead, feebly apply the -1 to my message, condem it to hell, and continue to preach to the choir that you really even care about such a stupid service.
The Neuros II player has a feature called (I think) HiSi which does this for free. And it plays oggs. And it's entirely open source, firmware and hardware included. (except I think they are having some troubles with TI at the moment, and the firmware source is temporarily unavailable for download.)
Don't know whether HiSi actually works, because I never use my player to listen to the radio, but it's still kind of cool if you want it.
And no, I don't work for them. I'm just a pleased owner.
Have a look at their partner's page and you'll see a powered by Shazam logo http://www.411song.com/Partners.aspx. Shazam (not shazam.co.uk ;) ) was in the UK over 3 years ago. Although the techies that came up with it were from the US.
It was pretty cool when we used to go to the bars before it was launched and test it out and see people's reaction.
I remember a few times in the office we had different music playing at people's desks and the system itself could identify about 4 songs that were overlaid. I can't remember the CD that was always giving false positives, it was basically 50 minutes of silence and background noise on a CD!
There was some pretty cool stuff going on like being able to RIP 4 CD's at a time on a single box to build their library and clusters of servers to create fingerprints of the music and perform the recongition.
I believe that they are using some type of sound recognition system.
An alternative approach would be to have your central server tuned in on all the radio stations.
And then when a caller calls in all the server has to do is find the channel that matches the song that comes through the phone. That can probably be done with very good precision.
I'm not sure, but I believe that most radio stations have lists of all the songs they play and when they played it. So then you can find the song.
Some radio stations also send out the song title for display on special radios. I forget what that technology is called (sorry).
This is possibly so simple that it could be set up by a private person without a lot of financial means.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
The Neuros (audio computer) will do it for you. When you listen to radio on it, hit the record button. When you sync it'll id the song for you (using MusicBrainz or something similar).
cl
Reply . . . let's get it over with.
I wonder if you get your money back if it can't identify the song, or if it identifies it incorrectly? I can see it being a bit of a minefield for customer satisfaction unless they really do have a top class product...
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
The song title is "Sexual", by a band called "Goddess".
I've never found the lyrics for it. All I can find is GnR's "Buick Mackane", neopagan/tantra/whatever stuff, and pr0n.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Time to Update your link, fool! By the way, the random text auto goatse-link troll is pretty cool. It makes me want to drool. All the way to school. OK, I think I'm done now.
Its great when u want to cheat in a pub quiz.
I've always wondered how it works, pretty damn clever if you ask me!
.
...over a year ago. Worked everytime; surprised me. I don't know if they still have it since being swallowed by Cingular.
Instead of paying a buck to figure out the name of the song you just heard on the radio.. you could try calling the station and asking. I have called a local station a few times in the past and they've been more then happy to tell me the name of a song they just played.
You could try their website as well, a lot of stations are putting their playlists up on their sites now; as long as you have a good idea of when the song was played it should not be to hard to figure it out.
And of course as others have mentioned, the almighty Google.
I just can not see anyone paying a buck to figure out a song title.
There is no spork.
too bad the blind are no longer allowed to post.
E-mail pater@slashdot.org to express your displeasure at his hatred of the visually impaired.
Oh no! Preparing for the rush of Giligan's Island jokes...
...doing this too. In the Bay Area and Japan. The company is no longer around. And Sony used to sell a gadget that could help you ID a song you heard in your car (but only once you were home and online).
What if I'm not quick enough to get my phone up to the speaker? It would be more convenient for me to hum/sing a few notes from the song and then get the title/author.
Suddenly it's news. Huh. Too bad it wasn't accepted then.
:]
Slow news day?
I guess I'm just oldfashioned to type a few of the lyrics into google with "lyrics" attached to the string and figure it out that way. And Metadata is a quicker and more efficient way for tagging mp3s anyway (considering the 15 seconds of each track that would have to be played for each song).
Is this using the same technology that is supposed to ID a song 'out on the net' and autogenerate a take down letter/suit?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I used MoodLogic, and it was really good. Only thing is, you either have to pay for using it, or gain "points" by helping create "profiles" for music you have. But it works really, really well.
try typing a line into google in quotes with the word lyrics and you can find just about any song .
Mac os X, Beautiful, elegant, Unix. Need I say more?
Suppose it'll correctly identify that John Cage song?
That assumes A) the song has lyrics, and B) the lyrics are at all comprehensible (i.e. doesn't work for a lot of rock).
:)
:)
> if the song is stuck in your head [...]
If the song is stuck in your head (as opposed to, say, playing on the radio), this service isn't going to do much good, unless it's able to figure out the song when you hum a few bars, which seems pretty unlikely.
Google is pretty good at finding song lyrics for you, but not 100% reliable. Especially if you're mishearing the lyrics - for example, I was trying to find what turned out to be Leadbelly's Linin' Track a while ago, and the closest match I could find was Aerosmith's Hangman Jury, because what I heard as "lie on the track" was, actually, "line 'em track".
But in general, yeah, Google's pretty good at identifying songs if you have some lyrics. Whereas this new service is likely to be next-to-useless for most purposes. Especially for my main need - identifying tracks on concert recordings I get through Etree.
I wonder if you get your money back if the service can't identify the song? I could probably stump it over and over and over again with random songs from the Internet Archive's Live Music Archive.
there is a company called yesnet www.yes.net that has been doing this for radio stations for a few years now. It's what radio station such as Providence's WBRU www.wbru.com (look at the very top) have been using on their websites and such. The only problem is when we (the djs) deviate from the playlist and the program director finds out by looking at the yesnet printouts.... DAMN YOU YESNET!
This type of service has been available in Canada from Fido for some time now.
Does anyone else remember the episode of 'Married with Children' where Al gets a song stuck in his head? I was thinking that this would be useful for that. I tried the google trick, but I couldn't remember the lyrics, either.
AT&T Wireless (now Cingular)has offered this since April of last year.
Bottom line, it is pointless, and will fail.
$sig$
This is something I havent seen metioned before, Last time I checked (When I paid for my 10,000 song subscription) it was ONLY win32, but it was BRILLIANT at getting the names, id3 tags right on my assorted collection of mp3's. Named about 75% of a 20Gb collection no problemos.
try it at
http://www.moodlogic.com/
really kewl stuff
DSLIP Web Design and Content Management Australia.
In some Singapore radio stations, you can SMS a query to the radio station and they'll reply with the name of the song for about 20 US cents.
I don't want to read
Dick Clark, he knows every song ever recorded and only charges me $.50.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Just google the lyrics, this will work, unless the song is instrumental. I wonder if radio stations post their song schedules...
This might be a long shot. But can anyone help me find the name for this song. It goes something like this:
Nana... Nana... Hmmm Hmm boom boom ne na na na chi chi chi kapow.
And then the chorus:
Na ne no na na na na oooooh ooooh bidi bidi badaaang.
Please let me know.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
This service is totally worthless for earworms!
Nice idea for a CAPTCHA tho...
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Lol this is pretty old, a local cell phone company has been offering this for weeks...
By something called StarCD. You would call and could find out the name of a song by entering the radio station - and it was free. They changed their name to Yes.net and for a while only had an internet service where you could essentially do the same thing. Now they seem to be back witht their phone service - http://www.yes.net/
I've got the same service with Virgin Mobile on my cell phone. I'm pretty sure the cost is the same, but I used the free trial once and it seemed to work really well.
Not at all new. Fido (aka Microcell) now part of the Rogers family launched '#DJ' service last year around this time.
http://stoneage.yes.com/corp/wap.html
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Like Pets.com. Sure pet stuff by mail seems like a good idea but are people really going to go for it? Will people REALLY pay for shipping on a 25 lbs bag of food? Does it fill THAT much of a void? Probably not.
Any bets on how long it takes 411 to sue these people?
I just tried it with a song which I have been trying to figure out off and on for awhile. 411-song failed on two attempts, which I suppose isn't too suprising. On the bright side they claim that I won't be charged since they didn't identify the song.
Moodlogic as suggested by other people seems to want me to identify the artist and song title before it will tell me the artist and song title which seems about as worthless as anything.
If anyone wants to take a crack at it, it is the second song played in this rm file: Glen Jones Radio Programme April 3, 2005
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
This was done during the dot-com boom. I remember my friend had some dongle he got for free...when he would hear a song he wanted he would point it at the radio. It would record time of day and station call numbers. Then you went home, connected it via USB, uploaded the info, and the song name was provided to you.
I thought it was so awesome because it was right around the time Napster exploded in popularity...
I've just heard this great song about Sarcasm and I'd be happy to pay $.99 to find out the name and another $.99 to download it. I really don't trust Google to find the song based on the lyrics...
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
Originally with Fido, now also with Rogers (since rogers bought Fido). You just dial #DJ on your phone.
Hasn't Sprint PCS offered this service as part of their 'Vision' package for like a year now? At no extra cost?
This has been available in Canada through the partnership of rogers and national music network, muchmusic, for over a year now. This is old technology.
Because of amiright.com, kissthisguy.com, and various blogs, such commonly misheard lyrics will probably already have been thought of by someone else and indexed by Google. In any case, pick phrases that you're most sure of.
Ahha! Finally something that Canada can tout as having before the US. On the Fido network up here, there is a service called #DJ. It does the same thing. And at only $1 per call, it's a steal.
they aren't able to id the song or if they provided the wrong info?
HD Trailers
...you can use the Classical Music Seach site. Just type in the melody (any key; it auto-transposes), and it searches for classical songs with that melody. It won't help you with jazz, but if you can't recall the name of a classical piece, this site can help.
It actually seems to be pretty good at nailing obscure songs, even instrumental tracks.
As if there is anything on commercial radio actually worth listening to...
This was being done quite a while back with Asterisk and MusicBrainz. It's not hard -- use the lib from MusicBrainz on *nix, and a custom script from Asterisk. Simple, easily done, and can be implemented faster than it takes for you to earn the $.99 fee at a minimum wage job.
How often do you have a song in your head and you can't identify the artist? Sure it happens, maybe once in a great while. To be honest when it does happen I'm usually adept enough to google lyrics, and it's as easy as that. Once in a great while an instrumental or unintelligibly enunciated song will stump me.
At 99 cents for your first 5 songs what they're really asking for $1 per hit. The other 4 songs will probably not be used (and I'll wager there's a time limit on how soon you must use the other 4 songs).
While the progenitors of this creation get points for originality I have doubt that it has real market value.
*grumblecakes*
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Maybe this has already been done as a poll, but I wonder how many geeks get their music through FM radio these days.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
If I hear a long-forgotten, once-loved song from the eighties and can't remember who sung it or what the hell it was called, I just listen carefully and scribble down a unique sounding line from the song. Hit google with 'lyrics "some line from the song"' and there you have it. You have to filter out the cheesy 90's remake versions, of course :-) And it's hell with instrumentals and those 'sounds like' guessing games.
For some reason they rarely announce title & artist on my local stations these days. Probably to stop people running off and downloading it before it's even finished playing.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
So do I pay 99 cents even if it gets it wrong? Sounds like a pretty sweet deal. I should start up a competing service myself. Of course, people might start getting suspicious when every song seems to be limited to whatever I've got currently loaded on my iPod...thank goodness for shuffle mode!
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
Didn't that go out with MP3?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
<sarcasm>Gosh, too bad there wasn't some search engine out there where you could type a line of lyrics and find info about the song that way.</sarcasm>
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Yeah, NPR plays a lot of great music in between segments of their shows. You can find out what songs they play on their site though:
http://www.npr.org/templates/music/
Also, they even have a show dedicated to that same great music:
http://www.npr.org/programs/asc/index.html
Maybe you'll be able to find what you were looking for. Good luck.
Or did they hire a bank of really knowledgeable people and have them type back?
If this is technological, I am quite impressed! Must be one helluva correlator.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I work in a fairly common music retail chain. You'd be surprised just how many random people call us, sing horribly into the phone, and ask us to identify the song/artist/album, and then want the sheet music for said song. It's always totally amusing. I kinda hope this whole service doesn't catch on widely. I'll miss the entertainment!
Hi. I'm Jenn... and I'm addicted to poppy seeds. Now give me my damn everything bagel with creamy cheesy!!!!!!!!!
I think this may be a bit more practical than this phone service. Personally I find most of these songs occur while I'm driving in the car. As I am already accident prone, this would make things a lot safer for me than trying to drive and hold this up to the speaker near my foot. Although with XM, I no longer need to worry about this mess.
"The Shazam database has almost 1.6 million tracks on it. This is more than twice what you'll find in the UK's largest music store - and it's growing every day."
Which is also more tracks than any of the online music stores out there. But I agree, the Electronic and other instrumental tunes will probably be underrepresented. I have a few songs that I got on a CD from an aquaintance, and have been having a hell of a time finding out what they are. I will have to try this musicbrainz that everyone keeps mentioning here.
...this is OLD F*CKING TECHNOLOGY and "Coolnat2004" is really behind in the f*cking times.
I can't believe this utter lameness got posted.
This should work great for rap songs! Hold up the phone, and the sampled music will identify as the original classic rock song it was stolen from!
I read an article about it in none other than a column in Scientific American, 3-4 years back.
Fido, I know, at least is #DJ. Can't remember the rest. Rogers has it with their MuchMusic phone package. I think it was standard text messaging rates for a while too.
But Maaa! Everyone else has a
I worked on an undergraduate school project to identify music as simply and as cost-effectively as possible using MIDI files. The concept is pretty basic--I spider the web for MIDIs, parse out the tonal data, and store it all in a big searchable database. I created a Java applet piano front-end for easy tonal input, but truth be told I think most people find the interface a little difficult to negotiate.
I find that this approach works pretty well for classical, though not so much for other musical genres. (The vast majority of MIDI files out there on the Internet are classical owing to copyright infringement laws.) Check out the website at http://www.tuneteller.com/ if you have a care...
I've done this on numerous occasion.s
Once I was in a coffeehouse and the place's subscription servce was playing a song I liked. I took out my notepad, listened to the singer carefully, and wrote down some of the lyrics. Then I googled parts of the lyrics to find them on the Web to identify the song.
I've done the same thing to songs I've heard featured on TV shows.
About four years ago a friend's dad pitched a group of us with this idea to guage reactions of the target demographic. We all said, "God No!" and told him that a really usefull technology would simply be a car radio that knew what each song was and could download/purchase any song you heard with the click of a button.
Because of our reactions he passed, but obviously someone took a bite.
Honestly it still sounds like a dumb idea to me, but maybe there are enough people out there who can't remember the lyrics long enough to look them up on Google for this to make money.
-Ian
lets see.. a service that i can call to figure out what song is playing.
1. i only hear new music i like in the car, on the radio, and using a phone while driving is hard
2. using a phone while driving is both dangerous and illegal in some states
3. It usually takes till at least 30% through the song until i know if i like the song, thus leaving maybe 2 minutes (in an ideal situation) to locate my phone, dial in the number (luckily its 411-song rather than giving me just numbers so that i have to look for the tiny microprint letters on my phone) and then, if i manage to do this without somehow crashing into a tree, school bus or the ocean, it needs 15 seconds. Luckily after i have done this i have easy access to the title... on my phone... while im still driving... very useful? Unless someone calls i guess?
i could probably think of other reasons why this service is stupid... like why not just write down a line of the lyrics and google it, free of charge. Just a thought.
Mike
I heart the RIAA & MPAA, im sure its mutual...
This service has also been available in Switzerland for several years, at no extra charge. At least Sunrise have it as a service in cooperation with a music store, so you can just reply to the message you get if you want to order the identified single. Other providers might have it too.
;)
Not very revolutionary nowadays. It's the same technology that enables wristwatches to identify songs on the radio to track user listening behavior, which has been done for about a decade now. The people wearing those watches having agreed to the monitoring, of course
This really should be very simple to do with some software on your computer.
1. Digitize sound
2. Run through speech-to-text program
3. Search for small segment of it on a song lyrics website.
(I hate underpants gnomes...)
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Beats me! Or is it that they are trying to read and parse our brain waves too?
Timi
http://www.thisismyindia.com/>This is My India
The public has long been trained that 800 numbers are free. And with the 800 number running out or exhaused the public is being trained to recognize other numbers as free, including 866 and 877. Other prefixes on the other hand are recognized to run up charges, such as 900 numbers. How do they manage to charge for 866 numbers, and more importantly why would the telephone industry want to subvert their toll free number system by letting them do this? Where does it stop? Can I get an 866 number and run it for some technical service (Microsoft problems come to mind) and then earn income off of all the saps that thought my 866 number was free?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
This type of stuff, while indeed cool, should be rather secondary, in my opinion.
We have already have this service here in Canada, but we still can't move our numbers among providers.
Priorities!
Old stuff... we had this here in Finland long ago (what was it 1-2 years ago? Does anybody remember anymore? I think it was Sonera or Zed.) Anyways, it was fun the first 2 times, but then... well I'm not sure if it's even available anymore.
If your song was:
4'33" by John Cage, press 1.
Tape Dada by Merzbow, press 2.
Schrei X by Diamanda Galas, press 3.
The Second Dream of the High Tension Line Stepdown Transformer by Lamonte Young, press 4.
I don't think this will work with my music collection.
--Matt
You just got added as a friend by 75% of the slashdot crowd ;oP
this service is available, for some radio stations in Holland, since since some time ago.
and 15 seconds later you'll get the name of the song that's playing right now rather than the song you just missed.
1) Release mp3s without tags or filenames on filesharing networks
2) Launch song ID service that charges $0.99 per song ($9.99 per album)
3) ???
4) Profit!
You misunderstood the question. The guy is looking for a tool for Linux that tags audio files based on a fingerprint using the MusicBrainz service. Id3 doesn't seem to do that (and id3 doesn't look like a program I'd trust anyway based on its web page).
I believe there is a MusicBrainz Perl module, which one could perhaps use for constructing a simple command line tool.
and it's been available in the UK for at least a couple of years now.
;)
It's fun in that 'use it once or twice and then never use it again' way. Much like AQA which you'll probably be getting in about 2009
Suttree, a weblog about casual games development
In response to the final sentence of the OP, if you're simply trying to identify music *files* on your hard drive, use MusicBrainz for that. The TRM audio fingerprinting system can identify any song in the database to within 4 or so matches (fingerprint collision does happen.)
I wonder if the aforementioned service works if you hum the melody into the phone.
We have a similar service in Australia, Bazook. In the few times I've used it, I've found it has worked well.
Only then would it be of interest to me.
I must warn though: I am not a very good singer...
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Can't see how this made it to the headlines.
Had it in Spain for over 3 years now!
This service exists since 2001 in France, branded under the name of "Yacast" http://yacast.fr/fr/index.html> ("service de pige musicale"). You can get a sms with the complete disc references, a ringtone, or sms news about the band.
Why does Slashdot put this kind of retro newsfor USA but is rejecting geek news from Europe ? (ECS 50th Eurovision)
(Sorry my bad French) Je fais parler les Guignols de l'Info. Le pied, quoi.
There is already such a service in Belgium.
It is sponsored by Coca-Cola (www.cocacola.be)
The name of the service is Music Recognition
The phone number is 0800 1 38 38
This service has been available here in Switzerland for years! 1) dial number. 2) hold phone up to speaker for 10-20 seconds. 3) check to see if the number you dialed has hung up. (once it recognizes the song it will hang up) 4) wait for SMS with the song name and performer. 5) you are charged for the SMS. no subscription necessary. (profit for them)
By the time I've realised the DJ isn't going to name the song, it's finished and it's too late.
I'm not going to phone up this company with every song I like just in case the DJ is incompetent.
Maybe they're planning on some people doing that....
That service won't work if you just have a little bit of the song in your head.
So I recommend recording your own version of the song, soon you will receive a legal writ accusing you of copyright infringement etc.
On this will be the original Artist and Song Title
Step 4. Profit
A funny one I once saw in a magazine was: "Can't remember the name of a song stuck in your head? Simply record and release your own version of it. Then, when you get sued for copyright infringment, the information you need will be on the writ."
Mobile operator Amena has been offering this service for one or two years... nothing to see here, please move along.
This is so old i can see the dust on that phone number, there was a nother service planned years ago, maybe they went under. Also there already is a service that ID's your mp3's online and tags them for free, tho i forget what its called - anyone?
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Shazam in the UK has done this for years. You just dial 2580 from any mobile and get the id sent to you as a text message.
There's even a web site with an faq:
http://www.shazam.com/uk/do/help_faqs_tagging
Have fun music lovers!
http://www.clarkeology.com/blog/
The OD2 powered 'mycokemusic' is now offering these identification services. The only difference, is that they are giving them away for free with promotional codes found on Coke bottles and cans. They call it a 'CokeTag', and it's available in the UK. I'm not sure if they have an American site for these, but this is the UK site:
http://www.mycokemusic.com/
Damn..I wish the rest of the world could keep up with this american technology!
http://www.speechpro.com/production/?id=644&fid=44
Original state-of-the-art algorithm which has been developed to spot music samples in a sound stream.
Btw, it's not an isolated phenomenon - #les..mm..miserables ?, I'm sure
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
A way to catalog all those Grateful Dead bootlegs...
I do not know if any other GSM operator had this before TurkCell but turkcell surely had it before 411-SONG. They introduced the service at early august 2004 at Cebit Bilisim Eurasia . The service is called "Ne bu calan" which means "What's this playing".
We've been able to do this for years in England via the shazam service (last time i used it was 5 years ago). Just dial 2580 and hold your phone up. If it can't figure your song out it won't charge you.
I'm sure Amazon really meant to recommend to you one like this:
A Hand In the Bush
I saw this technology demo-ed a couple years ago at ISMIR 2003 and it blew me away. The software was able to pick out songs transmitted over a cellphone in a noisy nightclub, in a shopping mall, and finally to really impress us all, he mixed together 8 or 10 songs, including two versions of the same symphony by different orchestras, and it picked out all of them. In each case I wasn't able to even distinguish the music from the noise. I mean, literally, if you'd asked me "is there music playing in this noise" I'd have said "I can't tell." It really blew my socks off that his software was that good. The point of this system is when you're in the nightclub and "that song" comes on. You know, the one you've only heard three times in your life, and there are no lyrics, and you have NO CLUE how to find out what it is, and no one knows, and the DJ is an asshole. Presto, you pull out your cellphone and make that call.
Dial 2580 from any phone, hold it near the speaker and it texts you back with the song title and artist in a few moments.
Not sure of the prices, I think 50p per track. I think its run by a company called Kazam.
I have no sig yet I must scream.
we have something similar, but not so advanced (no audio recongnition).
You can send SMS message to a specific number and they return you name of a song currently played on a specific radio station (very popular one btw.).
There's a cellphone service in Canada that started doing this last year. It was heavily advertised. I never saw any reason to use it, but to claim that this is a new service is just stupid. It's not.
-FweE-
I assume this is the same as the Shazam system in the UK. Here is a link to a pdf explaining how it works: http://ismir2002.ismir.net/proceedings/02-FP04-2.p df
I thought the 8xx series of north american area codes were reserved for toll-free calls?
Why isn't this a 900 number service?
Granted, I don't feel cheated... I understood their claim that if I played them a song and they recognized it they would charge me. I just wonder HOW they get permission to charge me.
INsigNIFICANT
Virgin Mobile has had this feature on their cell phones for some time.
P.S.S. If Google and/or Amazon isn't interested (yet)...
I think you want PPS (post postscriptum), not "P.S.S.". Or perhaps you meant "PISS"?
Spanish Amena mobile phone operator offered this in Spain more than two years ago, with a big marketing campaign when launched. I haven't heard about it since then, but I think it had some accuracy problems. People also complained about the cost, which is 0.45 with a "young" contract and 0.90 otherwise. More info (in English) at:i os_avanzados/musica_y_humor/68_1.html
http://ingles.amena.com/amena/particulares/servic
...you insensitive clod!
A service like this has been in the UK for well over a year. It's 2580 and costs about the same I think.
URL: http://www.shazam.com/uk/do/home
sounds like fun, give me a shout: gaustin@gmail.com -grant
has been doing this for at least a year. I've never actually tried it, but knowing the general quality of service of the Auna/Amena/Eresmas group, I would imagine it probably sucks big time. Has anyone in Spain tried it and had it work?
The most lucrative feature that this service could have is a buy now option that will allow you to buy the song to download to your mp3 player later. Imagine all the impulse buys.
Fido a canadian cell provider lauched this service a few months ago, just dial #DJ, they also charge way to much for this and id never worked for me...
... like they're just using an old Jedi mind trick. These are the books you're looking for. Buy them and move along.
MusicBrainz did a good job for me. I imported all my mp3s into iTunes on my new PowerBook, and then used iEatBrainz (a MusicBrainz front-end that interfaces directly to iTunes to find songs to tag and to tag them in place) to put tags on just over 1,100 untagged mp3s. It missed only about 90 of them, including both incorrect tags and failure to find a tag at all.
MusicBrainz needs better moderation - some inconsistencies did arise (such as capitalization; e.g., "acoustic" vs. "Acoustic" and the capitalization of short words and articles in song titles - "A Day In The Life" vs. "A Day in the Life" and other versions) - but overall it did a fine job. It even corrected me as to certain artists' names.
Wow, how fancy. I mean, 2 other prepaid cell phone companies have been doingt this for about 3 years now. But it's great to have a "NEW" service to do something an old service was already doing.... FOR FREE...
~~ Please keep your arms, legs, and outright stupidity inside the ride at all times. Thank You ~~
the way our existing service here works (and has worked for years - very handy in pub quizzes) is that you phone a free number for 20 seconds, hang up, and you get a text back within a minute with artist and track. it's text that costs you. if the track isn't recognised, you get a text back saying sorry, but it doesn't cost you anything.
in other news - Americans scienctists struggle to understand why British technology that can record television and skip adverts failed to work on FOX when it worked fine on BBC.
Whenever I find a song I like on the radio (not too often these days) and don't know the title I just memorize some of the lyrics and stick them in a google search later. I've had about 99% accuracy so far. The hard part, of course, is remembering the lyrics, which is where a piece of paper or a PDA is especially handy... Just don't write too much while driving, otherwise the only song you'll be thinking about is the jailhouse rock.
The song being played is:
Vorsicht, heiss und fettig
by
eine Musikgruppe niemand weiß
thank you, that'll be 99 cents please.
What happened to just calling the radio station?
google the lyrics.
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
If you can take a note with the time and station, you can find the name and artist to almost any song played on the radio in the US.
FREE.
Just go here. Listings are updated with about 20 minutes lag.
Now, I don't know how long this is going to be around, because YES is also looking to start a phone-based service. For now the old YES site is still working, so enjoy it!
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
For those in the U.S. who want to look up online what song they just heard on thier local radio station, head over to http://stoneage.yes.com/ .
.
For those who already know about Yes.net please make a note that the site has changed and now can be accessed at http://stoneage.yes.com/
Thanks
I've had this service on my lg7000/Verizon phone for about six months..
Google, or if you don't like Google there's this: http://findmeatune.com/ (based on Google but parses results) and others...
This sounds a lot like Sony's eMarker from 2002. You bought a $20 device with a button on it. Press the button when you hear a song you like. Sync the USB device and it tells you what song it was. I think they shut down the system after only a few months. It didn't take off.