Sufficiently advanced technology...

[dianec42]

So this is somewhat magical, at least until I find out how they do it:

There's a free app for the iPhone called Shazam. You play a song at it for about 10 seconds, it communes briefly with the mother-ship, and then it tells you what the song is and who performed it.

I don't know if it's available for other kinds of phone or not. They seem to be on the web at http://www.shazam.com/.

Today's lunchtime conversation was a touch more surreal than usual:

"What are you guys doing?"

"He's getting his phone so we can have my phone talk to it and try to confuse it...."

Sadly it doesn't seem to know anything classical, and I managed to stump it with Don Dixon. Come on people, that's out on CD! It does seem to know an awful lot of other stuff though.

So, bets are now open: How soon before someone gets busted for doing this while driving? (-:

Comments

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

Sadly it doesn't seem to know anything classical...

Then I needn't bother with it, I'm afraid.

[whc.livejournal.com]

Something similar is available on some of the Sony Ericsson phones.

There's a database of music samples (Gracenote, I think) which grew out of an open source project (CCDB?) that it hits to determine what the music is. This is the same database that some of the CD rippers hit to figure out the info.

Hmm, if it doesn't know any classical, maybe Shazam is using a different database.

[wouldyoueva.livejournal.com]

Dang, now I need a iphone so I can ID the songs on a mix CD someone gave me, which I lost the track list for.

[dianec42.livejournal.com]

I think it works on some other phones too. Or, of course, you could just borrow someone with an iPhone. (-:

oooooorrrrrr... you could use this as an excuse to get your own. Silly me, didn't think of that one!