Shazam!

I was skeptical of the Shazam application for the iPhone. Well, it was undeserved. For those who don't know, it records about 20 seconds of audio through the microphone, then a few seconds later tells you the artist and song name. I've got some pretty underground stuff, and I expected it would work so quickly by comparing against a relatively small database - like if you were trying to remember who did "Love Shack" while it's playing at a wedding in order to distract yourself from the song.

First I put it to the test against some classic rock off of iTunes; I was playing the songs through car speakers. The app identified 10 of 11 songs by artists like The Who, Blue Cheer, Zepher, Gentle Giant, White Witch, and Octopus. The only song it didn't get was by Captain Beyond. Anyway, those are on iTunes, so it's fair to expect those to be in the library it compares against. Too easy.

Next I tested a couple songs I had recorded off of record onto tape. I played the tape in the car and Shazam successfully identified a New Birth song and a song by the Rimshots. New Birth is on iTunes, but the Rimshots "Super Disco" is not.

Next I tried some songs straight off of vinyl. Jeannie Piersol's "Gladys": failure. Black Anger's "S.E.L.F.": failure. Johnny Hammond's "Never Can Say Goodbye": success. The Johnny Hammond is on iTunes, the other two aren't, and probably aren't available on CD either.

Anyway, it's a lot more useful than I expected, if you have an iPhone you should check it out.