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This will undoubtedly be one of those “I have to have it” applications for Android. Everyone has been in the car, been in a store, been watching TV, etc… heard a song they LOVED but didn’t know the artist or song. BUT I WANT THAT SONG!
Get this: with Shazam, you simply press a button and it listens to the song, identifies it, tells you the Artist, Song and Album Cover and then gives you quick links to Amazon Music Store (to buy) and YouTube (to see related videos)! Awesome.
As you can see in the video… it works… and WELL. I was sitting about 10-15 feet from my television in the above video. I also tried it with my laptop and it worked perfectly, too.
Of course Shizam isn’t going to identify LIVE music, even if its on CD, because it is cross referencing a database. If it’s live music like Nirvana Unplugged – then yeah – it should find it. But if you plan on going to concerts and sticking your G1 in the air and hoping you can find what song it is you’ll be sadly mistaken. But I’m also guessing no readers here are that dumb. Needless to say… no, you can’t sing lyrics into your phone to see if it can guess the song.
It would be interesting to try this in other settings such as at a restaurant, in a store, in a bar, etc… where the audio source is either much further away or there is some crowd noise/interference. Personally, I can see myself using this mostly in my car when listening to the radio. Darn DeeJays seem to ALWAYS announce the artist/song names EXCEPT the times I actually want to know.
Problemo Solved! Oh yeah, its available for the iPhone, too!
Unfortunately, Shazam’s business model is based on monthly subscriptions, which is silly. Their android app might be free now (I couldn’t find any reference to it on their web site), but it is obvious that they plan on charging a monthly service for it in the future. They currently want around $2.50/month to use the service on other cell phones. Who is really going to pay a monthly fee to occasionally be able to identify a song?
Hopefully the similar service, midomi, comes out with an Android version (they already have an iPhone version). It is a free service and offers other features like the ability to detect songs that you sing.
You might notice at the bottom of the application UI there is an advertisement. In this particular video it was of a website that claimed to have 10,000 breweries listed or something. So, it seems like they are going the sponsorship route. I think that model will work.
Also, they provide a link to purcahse on the Amazon Store. If this is an affiliate link, they could make money not only from someone purchasing that song from the store (from their phone) but of anything that person buys from Amazon from their phone in X amount of days.
I also think people would pay a couple bucks for this application if it was a 1 time fee. Just because its cool, cheap and you never know when it could come in handy. Plus its fun to show people hehe.
But I agree… subscription might reel in a few suckers but overall a bad idea IMHO.
I’ve got this on the iPhone and haven’t seen any references to charging for it … while midomi did a pretty good job of detecting what I sang into it the recording/radio recognition was terrible and never actually worked. Here’s to hoping it stays free? Not sure the *cool factor* is worth 2.50/month when I can just as easily lean over and ask someone else who did that stupid song from the iPhone commercial that my wife loves.
Seems like a nifty application. I like that you’re doing videos now! Congrats on gettin’ your G1. I’ve been counting the days until I can get one myself.
I have it on my Iphone. It is a free app. Very nice.
I always wondered, when you buy the g1 the app store is mostly free right? so what happens when the “free” apps are turned into the paid ones?? will it uninstall??
This is cool. Was always jealous of some verizon phones that had this feature. I downloaded it and interestingly ran shazam against the cake video you are playing in your youtube video. Damn it, it detected it! Nice, a keeper for me, thanks for the tip.