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?"

Comments

UK has Shazam Already

[dan_polt]

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 :)

Re:UK has Shazam Already

[Mwongozi]

I've found it to be quite accurate even with old/obscure stuff.

The web site is really horrible, but you don't need to use it. Just dial 2580 (UK networks only) and hold the phone up to the music for 30 seconds.

Re:UK has Shazam Already

[indicavia]

This kind of service has been available here in the small country of Norway for a while too! Trough the largest phone provider, Telenor.

Been there, done that ....

[Paul Lamere]

Wouldn't this technology be great for fixing up all those ID3 tags? MusicBrainz

AT&T already did this

[Logic Bomb]

AT&T Wireless did this a year ago. See http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/340/C2723/ for a typical summary

Old Hat

[civman2]

I believe that ATT Wireless has been offering a service like this for over a year. The only difference is that their service is only a three digit number and you don't need to pay out of the nose for it.

"The new "#ID" music service is provided by San Francisco-based Musicphone in cooperation UK-based Shazam Entertainment, which operates a propriety recognition database of more than one million recorded songs. AT&T Wireless customers can trial the music recognition service at no charge beyond standard airtime charges when they first dial "#ID." Afterwards, the service costs $.99 cents, plus standard airtime charges, each time they use it." -mobilemag.com

unless this is a year old news story...

This has been around for a while

[apoKalypse]

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.

Re:Well

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

People have been working on this problem for a long time. Check out papers published at ISMIR (International Symposium/Conference on Music Information Retrieval) for the academic work. The algorithms and technology are there, no question - the problem is the business model and the licensing. It seems simple, until you try to talk to record executives who don't want to license you access to their music catalog. It seems counterintuitive, since in theory it would make them more money, but they apparently don't see it that way.

Also, while it's technically feasible, it does get significantly more difficult computationally when you want to search an entire library of songs.

Here's an example of a free site that has the technology implemented, just without the database of popular songs (it works great for classical melodies).

Not trying to discourage you - the point being, either go into this because you think the tech is cool but don't expect to make money, or if your goal is to get rich, become a business major and be prepared to spend all of your time meeting with VC execs and recording industry leaders, rather than building cool tech.

Re:Well

[eddeye]

Wouldn't this technology be great for fixing up all those ID3 tags?

Well with google you can already do this for free.

I'll do you one better: musicbrainz recognizes songs by music fingerprint. The API is rough around the edges but it works pretty well. I cobbled together a python script to tag my 1300 mp3s and it identified all but a handful correctly. I'll throw a copy up on this page later for anyone who's interested.

as usual, America is late

[dascritch]

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)

Re:as usual, America is late

[commanderfoxtrot]

This sounds rather like MusicBrainz software.

Yes, this sort of service has been around in the UK and France for several years now.

Giles.

Shazam in the UK has been available for ages

[Jabes]

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!

Coca Cola is going down this route now..

[RemovableBait]

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/

Not new

[srleffler]

Virgin Mobile has had this feature on their cell phones for some time.

MusiBrainz, indeed

[ari_j]

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.