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New Phone Service Promises to ID Songs

Posted by samzenpus on from the name-that-tune dept.

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?"

6 of 354 comments (clear)

  1. Uh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So... now it costs as much to figure out what a song is as to buy it? No thanks.

    1. Re:Uh by AstroDrabb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hmm. Most major online music "stores" out in the wild allow you to do a very cool thing called search. So if you knew even a small part of the lyrics, you should be OK. Also, most of the major online music stores are taking a hint from Amazon. They are looking at your past purchases and recommending content. IMO, Amazon, has been on-the-money. Every book that Amazon has recommended to me, has been somthing I have wanted and as such, have purchased.

      --
      If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
      it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
    2. Re:Uh by rluberti · · Score: 3, Insightful

      for me is already crazy to see people pay for ring tones.....same people will probably use that service... I guess after knowing the music name...the same service will try to seel you the ring tone...

  2. XM Radio by taped2thedesk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    For $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.

  3. Only for popular songs. Bah-Humbug! by SeaFox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  4. a couple of things.... by yagu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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:

    • I tried to think how many times I've encountered just that need to identify a song -- turns out, at least for me, not that many. I do have a good ear and memory for music, but I can only think of once or twice in my life where I really felt the NEED to have this kind of service. I wouldn't pay anything for it regardless.
    • Do we really need yet another distraction from driving? While I can sympathize with most cellphone users it becomes almost (almost!) a necessary evil to occasionally talk on a cellphone while driving (though I do think it a bit over used and abused and probably has contributed to an accident or two), I cringe at the thought of people fumbling for their phone not only to dial up and "use" this service, but to do it under the auspices of a deadline, i.e., before the song ends on the radio. I think this just asks for trouble!
    • How accurate can this really be? The demo I saw was impressive, but for the songs I need ID'ed, they are much more obscure and the stats and performance of the demo I saw (let me emphasize I'm not totally positive it was one and the same as referenced here, but how many of these can there be?) the accuracy was good for most, but fell a bit for the less mainstream stuff -- which is the stuff I need ID's for.
    • How good is it for: Jazz; Classical; ID'ing specific rendition of a song (cover vs. original recording)?

    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?