GigaOM » Apple

(Shazam)RED Makes the App Store a Slightly Kinder Place

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:50:57 +0000

The (RED) movement allows companies to give a little back while also selling their products, by branding versions of their goods with the (RED) logo, name, and color. In exchange, a portion of the price of said products is donated to the fight against HIV and AIDS in Africa. Apple is on board with the program, with (RED) iPods, and now one of its iPhone developers, Shazam, has thrown its weight behind the cause, too.

Shazam is the first mobile app to endorse the program. (Shazam)RED is available on the App Store now for $4.99, which is the same price that Shazam Encore retails for.

The only difference between the two is that when you purchase (Shazam)RED, 20 percent of the purchase price of the app, or a little less than $1, will be “contributed to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria,” with (RED) funds specifically going towards the fight against HIV and AIDS. Also, in addition to the features included in Shazam Encore, you get access to (RED) news and content via an icon on the bottom menu bar that loads (BLOG) RED in a built-in browser.

In an interview with TMCnet.com, Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher highlighted the success of the (RED) program, and the potential reach of (Shazam)RED given the iPhone’s massive user base. With over 10 million people owning either an iPhone or an iPod touch worldwide, the potential boon for projects like (RED) is astronomical. And the relationship is mutually beneficial, since developers get access to the marketing value inherent in the (RED) brand.

In case you aren’t familiar with the new features of Shazam Encore, which is the paid version of the wildly popular music identification app Shazam, it allows you to find recommendations for your music tags, search for songs, albums, and artists, and see charts of the most-tagged music. You can also sync your tags with the web-based Shazam interface and share them via Facebook and Twitter. Finally, you can use car mode to identify playing on the radio while you’re driving.

If you were planning on paying for Shazam Encore anyway, there’s no real reason not to opt for (Shazam)RED (iTunes link) instead, unless you’re worried about future updates. I’m sure that Shazam will update this product for at least as long as they do Encore, though, because I can’t imagine much additional effort or expense would be required, if any, to do so.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Shazam Update Brings Intriguing New Features to iPhone App

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:00:50 +0000

Shazam (free, iTunes link) is one of the very few apps that I’ve actually gotten regular use out of, even nearly a year since its initial release. It does what my brain, radio DJs and movie credits can’t always do, which is identify music that I hear in passing while at the mall, during a movie or on the radio. I tag an album, carry it around for a while, remember that I’ve tagged it, and pick up a nice, new album here and there.

A new update just released for Shazam brings more features, including some that I wouldn’t expect in this kind of software. Expected or not, they are intriguing, and I’m looking forward to finding out if I’ll actually put them to good use.

The new features are designed to make the whole Shazam experience more social. There’s Twitter integration, so that you can tweet your tags directly, thereby sharing them with your followers. And even if your friends aren’t hip enough to have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon yet, you can share tags via old-school email postcards that allow them to add the info to their own Shazam accounts.

Perhaps more interesting than Twitter integration is that you can track your tags geographically using your iPhone’s location services. Your tags now appear on a map within the Shazam app, thanks to the new 3.0 Google Maps access API, which provides a visual geographic history of where and when you had music discovery moments. That would’ve come in handy for John Cusack’s character in “High Fidelity,” when he was organizing his music collection biographically. Time will tell if these additions influence the way we interact with music, or join the growing legion of underused iPhone app features.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Shazam App Lands Apple, Others in Legal Hot Water

Darrell Etherington — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:00:35 +0000

One of the original “wow”-inspiring iPhone apps, music recognition software Shazam, is now responsible for some legal trouble for Apple. Tune Hunter, a company that claims to hold the patent on the technology that Shazam uses, filed suit against the app’s developers, as well as Apple, Gracenote, Napster, Amazon.com and Samsung, among others. It’s actually almost easier to list major players in the electronics industry they didn’t file suit against.

The patent (no. 6,941,275, to be specific) describes “a music identification/purchasing system, specifically to a method for marking the time and the name of the radio station in portable device such as a key holder, watch, cellular phone, beeper or the like which will allow the user to learn via internet or regular telephone the name of the song, artist and/or music company by matching the stored data with broadcast archive.”

That description does indeed sound like Shazam’s functionality. If you’re not familiar with the app, it works by comparing an audio clip recorded via your iPhone’s microphone to an online music database, and then returning a song, artist and album name if it recognizes the track. Besides the iPhone version, there’s also one for Google Android, RIM’s BlackBerry devices, and even web-based apps like Facebook. Oddly, those three companies somehow escaped being named in the suit, despite the iPhone’s inclusion.

Tune Hunter is looking for damages and an injunction against further infringement (which would basically halt the distribution of the Shazam app). What they most likely want, though, is a nice fat settlement from the combined coffers of the heavy hitters they cite in their suit.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Shazam Expands Music Database by 30 Percent

Darrell Etherington — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 02:00:50 +0000

Just the other day, I was using Shazam to tag music while watching a movie. Every time I use it, I’m still vaguely amazed, like I’m watching a mini-magic show. Well, now the magician has even more tricks up his sleeve thanks to a 30 percent increase in the size of its song database. I’ve yet to run into a hole in their current one, and now I’m even less likely to.

The increase, which bumps the overall number of tracks Shazam has access to from six to eight million, follows the establishment of new partnerships and direct sourcing, and includes artists from Asia, Europe, and North America. It includes a number of hard-to-find and pre-release songs, which is what I find myself using it for most often, since those are the tunes I’m less likely to recognize on my own.

Shazam now dominates the song recognition niche for mobile devices, although Midomi is still a strong competitor because of their support for humming, singing, and reciting lyrics. Both companies offer a lot to record labels and recording artists alike, and represent the future of direct marketing to consumers. It’s in the interest of labels and music publishers to back these ventures as much as possible, since you can’t buy music if you don’t know what it is.

There are a few things I’m still missing from this app, despite its obvious utility. I like the iTunes and YouTube integration, and the ability to share tags, but the lack of My Shazam integration, so that I can store and view my song Tags anywhere is a definite must. Apparently that’s being worked on, but it can’t come fast enough.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Shazam: What Song is Playing?

Weldon Dodd — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:44:46 +0000

I once spent almost 3 months trying to track down a song that I had heard a few times on the car radio while commuting to and from work back in 2000. I was pulling my hair out because I kept missing the DJ to catch the name of the record. To make things worse, the track was an instrumental so I couldn’t find the lyrics on Google (which had launched just a year or two prior). I managed to catch that it was a tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan, but it still took me another few weeks to finally identify “S. R. V.” by Eric Johnson, written to honor one of my all-time favorite musicians.

If only I’d had an iPhone. And Shazam.

Shazam is possibly the coolest application that I have seen on the iPhone. If you haven’t seen it yet (how is that possible?), the software is pretty straightforward — it uses the built-in microphone on the iPhone to take a 15 second sample of music. It then sends that sample to the Shazam elves over the Intertubes who toil away night and day to compare that sonic signature to a database of almost 5 million pieces of recorded music. Once a match has been found, Shazam shows you the artist and track information and provides links to purchase the song in the iTunes music store or watch a video on YouTube. It saves a list of songs you have “tagged” with Shazam and lets you email the links. Frankly, it’s amazing to watch as it works and is one of the first apps I show to friends who haven’t played with an iPhone.

Shazam does a pretty good job of picking up background music so it works great to pick up songs playing on the car radio. If you’ve ever had that experience of wanting to know the title of a song you just missed, run, don’t walk, to download Shazam from the iTunes App Store.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.