As yourself this: How many times have you found yourself sitting at home listening to the radio or tv or perhaps out at a coffee shop working on your Nexus 7 and you hear a catchy song that you just can't think of the name of the band or name of the song? Well with 'Shazam' all you have to do is quickly tap fire up the app, hit a button and 'presto', 'Shazam' 'listens' to the music or soundtrack and identifies it for you. Not only that it also provides a link to purchase it right there and then as well as add to a a favorites list, share it with your friends and more. It's really a pretty remarkable and novel use of technology. Here's the company's preview video that gives a full rundown of features:
You can also:
○ Save and listen again (30 sec previews)
○ See streaming lyrics in time to the music
○ Buy tracks easily on Amazon MP3
○ View extra content as you watch TV
○ Watch music videos & concerts from YouTube
○ Listen to your tagged music in Spotify
○ Share on Facebook & Twitter
○ Discover new music in Shazam Friends & Charts
○ See when an artist is touring
○ Use it when you don’t have a signal
○ When you see the Shazam prompt on TV, tag for extra content
○ Tag from your home screen with the Shazam Widget
○ Remember where you tagged a track with Location
Pretty amazing eh? So how does it work? 'Shazam' accesses a database at the company that literally stores tens of thousands of music, tv shows and even ads that you might hear in algorithmic form. When you use the app it instantaneously compares the snippet of sound you are listening to and quickly converts it to an algorithm that it can match. The accuracy is simply uncanny and it's one of the coolest apps to show off to friends that'll blow them away. Amazingly, the app even let's you use it when it's not connected to wi-fi, although to get the best results it really does need to be connected so it can access the full database.
Now the service and app is free but there is an 'encore' version that removes ads and ads a few features like linking to 'Pandora' to create customized play lists that'll set you back a few bucks. 'Shazam' has added some really cool features in recent updates like the ability to show streaming song lyrics and connect to spotify. The company is definitely pushing the 'social networking' aspect of the service and 'Shazam' has actually been downloaded over 250 million times so it's definitely catching on. Grab the free version of 'Shazam' at the link below and if you want to get rid of the ads and unlock the 'exclusive' features you can do so from within the app. Enjoy and let us know how you like it!
