Featured App – Shazam
Filed under: app, entertainment, featured app, lyrics, music, search
Picture this: you’re in a shop and like the song that they’re playing but have absolutely no idea what it is. You try frantically to listen out for one line of the lyrics so that you can pop it in to Google and hopefully find out the name of the song so that you can purchase it from iTunes (or find it on MOG!); fortunately, there’s an app for that!
I know it’s been around for over 10 years but I still think Shazam is the bomb when it comes to finding out the name of the song that you can hear playing.
For those who don’t have it, it’s basically an app that uses a smartphone’s in-built microphone to listen to, and tag a quick grab of music. The app then searches an internal database and gives the user information about the song, the artist and the album; as well as the lyrics, other popular songs by that artist and info if there is an upcoming concert or tour. It also links to it on iTunes and YouTube.
Now, I’m not going to get into the technical details of how it works (mainly because I don’t know). So like fax machines, its mechanics will have to remain one the world’s greatest mysteries and you’ll just have to be content accepting the fact that it does work – most of the time. I ran a little test and found that nearly everything from Nova to Triple Jwas pretty easily found. Triple R was a bit trickier (but let’s be honest, smartphones are probably far too mainstream for most of Triple R’s listeners).
It is available as a free app, Shazam; a paid-app Shazam Encore which also links to Spotify and Pandora; and Shazam RED which is the same price as Shazam Encore but is part of the Product Red campaign, with a portion of its proceeds going to HIV/AIDS prevention.
Shazam users in the US can now tag TV shows to get info on the music in that show, gossip on the actors and links to the cast and crew’s personal Twitter accounts.
Shazam is available on Android, Apple iPhone and iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Nokia, Windows Phone and most other phones.
*The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Telstra.
Shazam is good – I did use it some time back but since switched to SoundHound which I find much better. Not sure if it’s available on iOS though.
I have sound hound on my iphone and it’s much better than shazam.
This functionality is also built directly into Windows Phone and accessable via search, no app required.
Sony has had this functionality on their so-called “dumb phones” (aka. feature phones) since as far back as 2005, on the Sony Ericsson W800…
“Track ID” as the feature is called, was initially restricted to Sony Ericsson’s “Walkman” range, but over the years progressed to most Sony Ericsson phones and has been a default feature on all of the “Xperia” smartphones to date.