New Phone Service Promises to ID Songs 354
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?"
Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uh (Score:4, Funny)
How could you buy it if you knew what song it was?
Re:Uh (Score:5, Funny)
How could you buy it if you didn't know what song it was?
(Note to self: first coffee, then Slashdot)
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uh (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Uh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Congratulations (Score:3, Funny)
Next time I try to be funny I will add smileys for you.
Re:Uh (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Uh (Score:3, Insightful)
This service works also if the music has no lyrics.
Most major online music "stores" out in the wild [...]
Thanks to this service you don't have to be online to get the title of a song. So it should work instantly everywhere you hear music: in a night club, in a "old world" music store, in a train station or with your TV.
as usual, America is late (Score:3, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, this sort of service has been around in the UK and France for several years now.
Giles.
MusiBrainz, indeed (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Uh (Score:2)
Re:Uh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Uh (Score:5, Funny)
No, I'm New Here (Score:2, Funny)
Re:No, I'm New Here (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Uh (Score:2, Insightful)
You must listen to a lot of instrumental music. What I do for vocal music stations is just listen closely to the lyrics and then type key phrases into Google.
Re:Uh (Score:2, Funny)
Lady Mondegreen (Score:2)
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.
UK has Shazam Already (Score:5, Informative)
I have actually used it for mp3 tagging too
Re:UK has Shazam Already (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:UK has Shazam Already (Score:5, Funny)
Re:UK has Shazam Already (Score:3, Funny)
Re:UK has Shazam Already (Score:2)
I'm guessing it's just MusicBrainz hooked up to the cell network.
Re:UK has Shazam Already (Score:2)
Re:UK has Shazam Already (Score:2)
It's also available in Canada (Score:2)
Old news (Score:3, Insightful)
FTS (Score:2)
Not at
Been there, done that .... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Been there, done that .... (Score:2, Interesting)
I've seen people asking for bulk retagging using MusicBrainz for my favorite music player, but boyhowdy, if I sent my collection through it, I'd never be able to find anything again. =]
In short... if this service is anything like MusicBrainz I hope they offer refunds.
Re:Been there, done that .... (Score:2)
Re:Been there, done that .... (Score:2)
I imagine this service would compare the actual wave form of the sound played to it through the phone with the waveform of sounds in it's database. I don't believe that Music Brainz does that, as it would essentially require a copy of every matched song to be present in its database.
I may have some of my terminology wrong, but I hope it's clear what I'm getting at.
Re:Been there, done that .... (Score:4, Interesting)
In my experience, it works fairly well and only gets confused when the same recording has been released on multiple albums ("best of", remasters, etc).
Re:Been there, done that .... (Score:2)
Anyway, this over the phone service won't be fingerprinting a whole song, since it needs to work by only hearing a small sample. Whatever it will do, it will be different than the way Music brainz works.
Moodlogic (Score:2)
Well (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Well (Score:4, Informative)
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 [musicbrainz.org] 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 [eddeye.net] later for anyone who's interested.
Re:Well (Score:2)
Please do! It'll probably save me lots of time trying to write a decent tagger from scratch.
Re:Well (Score:2)
Re:Well (Score:5, Funny)
Sincerely,
Google
Re:Well (Score:2)
Everyone is always interested in forming a startup. I'm interested, you're interested, half the people here are interested. If you're interested in keeping your idea, though, broadcasting it to a million programmers may not be the best way to go about it.
Do you really have the time to devote to it... or at least something, though? If so, I'm right here.
redcard411@XgXmXaXiXlX.XcXoXm
Re:Well (Score:4, Informative)
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 [musipedia.org] 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.
AT&T already did this (Score:5, Informative)
Old Hat (Score:3, Informative)
unless this is a year old news story...
Re:Old Hat (Score:2)
AT&T's more expensive, not less. The service in TFA is $0.99 for the first 5 uses (~20 cents each), then $0.99 per use afterward (same price as AT&T's).
Think of the marketing possiblities (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Old news? (Score:2)
AT&T Wireless has had its own version of this for a while now, #ID. http://www.wirelessweek.com/article/CA521810.html [wirelessweek.com]. 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/ [musicbrainz.org] if you're trying to fix those ID3 tags.
B
XM Radio (Score:5, Insightful)
And after they charge you $.99 for IDing the song, (Score:3, Funny)
Service for slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Service for slashdot (Score:2)
Or, if it's a slashvertisement. (which this one is)
Only for popular songs. Bah-Humbug! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
cheap solution (Score:3, Insightful)
if the song is stuck in your head, lyrics should be little trouble
certainly cheaper, probably better, not perfect (Score:2)
> 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 exa
Re:certainly cheaper, probably better, not perfect (Score:2)
The Archive of Misheard Lyrics [kissthisguy.com] to the rescue.
This has been around for a while (Score:2, Informative)
Slashvertisement. (Score:2)
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.
Huh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Huh... (Score:2)
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?
That's great if your songs have lyrics. But what about instrumental pieces? I listen to a lot of celtic, swedish, old-timey, etc. fiddle tunes which do not have those handy indentifiers.
Re:Huh... (Score:2)
But you can always try... Like one guy who asked on the forum: what is the name of that French song with accordeon which goes, "Tur-lu-tu-tu-tu"?
(A: In Grid - Tu es foutu
Re:Huh... (Score:2)
This service is just great for those one time uses.
Tommy Twotone (Score:2)
Stewie: Ok now home number... oh yes. 8675309.. *ring ring* Wait that's not it. DAMN YOU TOMMY TWO TONE!
a couple of things.... (Score:5, 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:
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?
Re:a couple of things.... (Score:3, Interesting)
If the bottom line is that you don't need it, then don't use it. I can never understand people complaining about technology they think is useless. Exactly what impact does it have on your life if they make a microwave with 100 power levels?
I'll tell you, NONE. But for the dude around the corner, it's what he's been looking for, and more importantly, what he'll shell out a couple bills for.
Concerning the song identification, I think it's prett
Ear worms (Score:2)
There are two known ways to get rid of them:
Perhaps I should ask /. (Score:2)
"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 B
I can name that tune in 3 notes! (Score:2, Funny)
Oh... wait...
An alternate approach (Score:2)
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 station
They're confident! (Score:2)
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...
A song I can't find anything about... (Score:2)
I've never found the lyrics for it. All I can find is GnR's "Buick Mackane", neopagan/tantra/whatever stuff, and pr0n.
Re:A song I can't find anything about... (Score:2)
I'm replying, because I know how annoying this can be. I checked 10 of the top lyric search engines, and the song just doesn't exist (at least to them).
This [artistdirect.com] is the only information I found on that song.
Good luck!
Just and idea... (Score:2, Insightful)
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 men
I submitted this as a story over a year ago. (Score:2)
Slow news day?
Audio watermarking? (Score:2)
Married with children (Score:2)
Not New (Score:2)
Help me (Score:2)
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.
Re:Help me (Score:2)
Not today.
'DJ' service been out over a year (not new) (Score:2)
This is a great example of.... (Score:2)
Well.... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [wfmu.org]
Re:Well.... (Score:2)
Sorry
Deja Vu? (Score:2)
Does anyone really listen to FM radio? (Score:2)
Maybe this has already been done as a poll, but I wonder how many geeks get their music through FM radio these days.
Re:Does anyone really listen to FM radio? (Score:2)
Give 'em a try.
Huh? Just listen to the lyrics (Score:2)
For some reason they rarely announce title & artist on my local stations these days.
Re:Huh? Just listen to the lyrics (Score:2)
Here's a blatant plug.
My station of choice [ckua.com] not only plays fantastic music, but lists _all_ of their playlists online afterwards. They also provide streaming audio feeds, and don't play top 40. It's like campus radio that's grown up.
No affiliation, but they're great.
Re:Huh? Just listen to the lyrics (Score:2)
99 cents for a wrong answer? (Score:2)
ID3? (Score:2)
Stupid idea (Score:2)
<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>
We've had this in Canada for AGES (Score:2)
I heard about this from a VC friend... (Score:2)
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 lyric
Shazam in the UK has been available for ages (Score:3, Informative)
There's even a web site with an faq:
http://www.shazam.com/uk/do/help_faqs_tagging [shazam.com]
Have fun music lovers!
Not new (Score:3, Informative)
99 (Score:2)
But you have to figure out what the song is first!
Re:musicbrainz (Score:2)