SwingDJs

I was reading an article about Google developing technology that can hear as little as 5 seconds of a TV program and know what it is (then give you ads related to it), and the article referenced a preexisting service called "Shazam."

Apparently it's possible to call a number, hold your phone to recorded music for 30 seconds, and get information on what the track is. They claim to have "almost every song" in their records, except classical & vinyl.

Does anyone know if this does a good job at little-known (outside dancers' communities) big band / old jazz? Or can it only identify big hits from the big names, the way an average jazz musician (or probably we ourselves) could do?

Intriguing.

Or does it work as well as Kramer's 'Movie-Phone" concept?

It reminds me of a specific episode of Married with Children actually.

I'm amused, I may have to try it out next time I'm stumped with a song... generally though it's a song I've heard when I'm not able to get to a phone. So no sure how useful it's going to be.

kitkat wrote:Apparently it's possible to call a number, hold your phone to recorded music for 30 seconds, and get information on what the track is. They claim to have "almost every song" in their records, except classical & vinyl.

Does anyone know if this does a good job at little-known (outside dancers' communities) big band / old jazz? Or can it only identify big hits from the big names, the way an average jazz musician (or probably we ourselves) could do?

Yes, it works and it's great. I've used it at dances. I try to remember to take my mobile phone with me if I'm looking to discover new music. If you have the service's number in your phone, it's even possible to dance at the same time (phone discreetly in hand). A lot of older material isn't on their database though - maybe it will be in future? They use another company in the USA - it should be fairly easy to find out who.
http://www.shazam.com/music/portal/sp/s ... music.html

I don't know how I missed this the first time around but I just found it as an iPhone application - with the small sample of tests I've done it's pretty good, even from competition clips on YouTube through crappy laptop speakers. Just hold your iPhone up to the speakers and in 5 seconds you've got an answer, no need to call anyone/anything.

More info at their site.

there's also midomi, which also has an iphone app.

I have enjoyed playing with Shazam. Useful for checking youtube clips.
I get about a 75% success rate which is not too bad considering the material.
Just downloaded midomi and haven't tested it too much yet. Will be interesting to check out tune recognition facility - hum a tune and it will find it

ps I now use iPhone as my emergency backup when DJing.
I was DJing a competition last weekend and downloaded the songs onto my iPhone as the backup. Fortunately there were no problems and all the technology worked without any issues.

russell wrote:ps I now use iPhone as my emergency backup when DJing.
I was DJing a competition last weekend and downloaded the songs onto my iPhone as the backup. Fortunately there were no problems and all the technology worked without any issues.

Last contest I DJed (Cowtown) I setup my contest music on my laptop then managed the music from the floor via my iPhone. It was fun.

Last contest I DJed (Cowtown) I setup my contest music on my laptop then managed the music from the floor via my iPhone. It was fun.

I do something similar at our local venue with Remote and Simplify Media. Use Remote to access iTunes when I'm away from the booth and Simplify if there's a song I don't have on me (usually non-swing).

Man I love Shazam; I went through all of my event DVDs checking out songs I couldn't ID and didn't want to bother the forum with. Got all but one of them (of maybe about 20).

Finally, it seems like there might be something those of us outside the U.K. who don't have an iPhone (BlackBerry, etc.) can use.
Tunatic

Probably light years behind, but hey, at least it's a start.

kitkat wrote:Finally, it seems like there might be something those of us outside the U.K. who don't have an iPhone (BlackBerry, etc.) can use.
Tunatic

Probably light years behind, but hey, at least it's a start.

Anyone else played with tunatic? So far it is batting about .150 for my iTunes collection, and .000 for YouTube of the ILHC comps.