AT&T Wireless Announces Music ID Service 333
mindless4210 writes "AT&T Wireless announced today the release of their new Music ID Service from Musicphone. AT&T customers can identify songs by dialing '#ID' and holding their phones next to the music source. Daily Wireless did a full review of the new service, testing it in several environments against different genres of music. Now you can finally figure out the name of that song on the radio that you've been dying to know!"
Is this a cool idea? (Score:5, Informative)
Someone's been reading... (Score:2)
Re:Someone's been reading... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is this a cool idea? (Score:2, Informative)
Pick a city, it gives you a list of radio stations in that city. You can then pick a time and it will tell you the song and artist playing at that time. It also provides a way to jump to amazon or ebay to find and buy the cd if you want. Looks to be add free so I would guess they must get referal payments or something.
Good idea, too much money. (Score:5, Interesting)
I congratulate them on the technical achievement, but I think that $0.99 (which is the price quoted in the review) is way too high a price for this service-- for that I could actually buy the song on iTunes or Napster. Unless they drop the price, I don't think this service will be terribly successful.
On an interesting note, it is not clear from their TOS whether or not you still have to pay for a song recognition even if the service is unable to accurately provide you with the song title.
Cool idea, but not for a buck.
--- JRJ [jrj.org]
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:5, Funny)
Now, will their system overload if you try to get it to recognize Death Metal?
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, I was thinking about this, and the real solution here is for AT&T to partner up with iTunes and/or Napster in this regard.
It'd be pretty cool to be able to tell iTunes, "I'd like to be able to buy this song..." (holding cell phone up to the radio), pay the standard $0.99, and then let iTunes pass off a nickel or so to AT&T.
But, yeah, doubling the price to hold up your phone to the radio rather than type a lyric frag
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:2, Funny)
Bastard. Soda out the nose hurts. I want my dollar back. That was too funny.
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:2)
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:2)
Yeah, well, when your appendix explodes, or you're about to lose everything you own in some ridiculous lawsuit, the cost of a doctor or lawyer begins to seem perfectly reasonable - no matter what that cost is.
There's a vast difference between the value of those services and the value of "Ohhh... it's called 'Baby Got Back'? I always thought it was called 'I Like Big Butts'"
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article:
AT&T will let you test the service for free your first call, but everytime after that it costs $.99 cents, plus standard airtime charges. If it can't guess the song, then your next call is free.
Not fan of the "next call is free" policy. I'd rather have the current call to be free. Who knows when will I try to use it again.
-B
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:2)
If it can't guess the song, then your next call is free.
In a related announcement, AT&T today announced their new Your Next Call is Free promotion.
~jeff
AT&T sell it, not make it (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:5, Informative)
Then prepare to be amazed!
I've been using the same tech here in the UK for the past year and it really does work. Most of the stuff I listen to is not chart stuff, I didn't believe it would be all that good but, yes it really is.
When you'd kill for the name of the song and your mates don't know it, then its great to just dial 2580 and direct your phone's mic towards the nearest speaker. Shazam [shazam.com] then sends you a text of the name of the song and you can access a list of all your songs on the Shazam website. It costs 59p here which is ~99c.
For those suggesting that you should be able to get a song with your purchase; Shazam let you get a ringtone (mono or polyphonic) just after you get the name of the track. I haven't used this yet so can't commment on it.
As for its accuracy I've only once had a problem with it and that was because I was in a club with very bad audio and decided to basically 'test' Shazam out. There was a part of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Sprirt that didn't sound anything like it should - just a lot of high pitch noise. Shazam couldn't work it out, so I got my next song name or 'tag' for just 9p.
You will be suprised by this service.
Best part (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, fair enough... but we're talking relative value here: if the song itself is worth a dollar then how much is the NAME of the song worth? It just doesn't seem like a good value for my money.
What they need to do is offer 100 songs for $10 or something, or add it as a flat-fee monthly addition to your service. (or, dare I say, a free value-add to distinguish their cell phone service from others!) Obviously, nobody at AT&T has read Seth Godin's Free Prize Inside [amazon.com]
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:5, Informative)
No. These audio fingerprinting services work by comparing audio samples of the songs (as recorded). They won't work if you hum a few bars into the phone. Hell, they wouldn't work if you played the tune almost perfectly on a piano, for that matter.
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:2)
Unless it's a piano piece, of course.
Re:Good idea, too much money. (Score:2)
Um, unless it's a piano piece, and all your piano keys sounded at the same timbre as the original musician's, and you were playing at exactly the same tempo as the original piece, and you were playing the piano in a soundproof studio into a mic positioned essentially where it was in the original recording studio, and then applying, in real-time, almost exactly the same compression and EQ and effects as the studio engineers did, and piping that through a speaker into y
Radio? (Score:2, Funny)
I would have made the number to call #ID3.
Sounds like pretty slick technology.
Thats not funny! (Score:2)
Seriously, 200 GB with 10 partitions is more than enough rope to hang yourself.
mwahaha (Score:3, Funny)
Re:mwahaha (Score:3, Funny)
Error: Music was not input...
Does anyone know this song? (Score:2, Funny)
la-la-la-lalala-la-la-la?
Thanks.
Re:Does anyone know this song? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Does anyone know this song? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Does anyone know this song? (Score:2)
Re:Does anyone know this song? (Score:2)
~S
Re:Does anyone know this song? (Score:2)
Hello, ClearChannel? (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, that was before Clear Channel laid all the local DJs off in most markets. Now, the same network DJ banter can be heard before different songs in some cases...
Re:Hello, ClearChannel? (Score:2)
Also before Clear Channel put every popular song into every rotation on every station in the northern hemisphere at 15-minute intervals.
If it's the Next Big Thing(tm), you'll probably hear it enough times to memorize the lyrics before they ever get around to identifying the artist.
The Dalai Llama
...hit me baby, one more time...hit me baby, one more time...hit me baby, one more time....
Re:Hello, ClearChannel? (Score:2)
Re:Hello, ClearChannel? (Score:2)
Re:Hello, ClearChannel? (Score:2)
Announcing (particularly back-announcing, where they tell you what you just heard) is something that, quite often, costs the promoters more money - the station (or network) does it when the promoters pay to make sure it's done, to aid in the m
need to find a good DJ (Score:2)
(yes, he actually called it that. I woke up to hearing him explain the change in format and that "we got rid of their devil music too!")
I never fo
My radio tells me the song name (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My radio tells me the song name (Score:2)
We'
Google is my savior (Score:5, Informative)
it hasn't failed me yet!
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
Re:Google is my savior (Score:2, Insightful)
....
unless you also have a liking for the finer shades of techno
....
and you can forget about humming the tune in the record store :)
....
"It goes a little like this Boom DaDaDa Boom, Boom DaDaDa Boom, Boom DaDaDa Boom, Boom DaDaDa BoomBoom"
Re:Google is my savior (Score:2)
What's that song that goes, like, A# G# F F F and then an A7 chord? With the timpani? You know the one I mean.
Believe it or not, I know people who have been in this situation before, and they posted to usenet, basically, notes, and or 'ba baaa bippity bippity doo doo doo', and amazingly, people posted THE CORRECT response. USENET is awesome.
Re:Google is my savior (Score:4, Informative)
Behold Classical Music Search [znet.com]
I'm afraid there is no classical song that goes A# G# F F F, followed by anything from A7.
I remember something like this.. (Score:3, Interesting)
can any other Finnish people confirm?
I thought it to be just a cool gimmick, not something that real people would use.
Re:I remember something like this.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Funny; I was thinking of testing it out with some Finnish folks songs that I've heard but don't have names for. And some Bulgarian, Nigerian, Peruvian, and Chinese songs, for that matter. Also, I probably wouldn't be playing a radio for them; I'd be playing my fiddle or flute or accordion or Yamaha keyboard or some such, because I don't have recordings of them.
Think this would work?
I wasn't too impressed by their tests. They failed to identify Beethoven's Moonligh
Re:I remember something like this.. (Score:2)
I state that I recall seeing a system like this in use at least a year(or two) ago already, and asked if any other Finnish people remember it. It was a service that you could call to with your cellphone and it would tell you what song it was, it might still be in use but nobody has talked about it since it first came so it was just a gimmick for ID'ing some pop songs.
Yeah that's REALLY hard to figure out from my post, ma
But does the price include... (Score:2, Funny)
Until they can come up with one ... (Score:2)
Why?
Re:Until they can come up with one ... (Score:2)
It goes like this. dah, dah, dah, dah...
Joe
The Last DJ. (Score:5, Insightful)
How much you'll pay for what you used to get for free
And there goes the last DJ
Who plays what he wants to play
And says what he wants to say
Hey, hey, hey
And there goes your freedom of choice
There goes the last human voice
And there goes the last DJ
Tom Petty
Re:The Last DJ. (Score:5, Funny)
And there goes the last DJ
Damn, if only I knew the title of that song...
Cheers,
IT
Been done in the UK for a year now. (Score:3, Informative)
Cost is 59pence per call (which must be about 35 cents or something in US of A money).
Re:Been done in the UK for a year now. (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway, if its $1.05 in the UK, it just proves that the UK is ALWAYS more expensive than the States.
this can't possibly work for the stuff i listen to (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:this can't possibly work for the stuff i listen (Score:4, Informative)
For example, I tried it on a bit of music in the film "The Shawshank Redemption", and it correctly named it as being composed *for* the film - and named it too (it was something like "Shawshank prison music").
It made me go "ooooh", big time.
And for a small supplemental fee... (Score:2)
...AT&T can arrange for any copyright violations to be reported directly to the RIAA, including full details of your name and address.
Valuable data... (Score:2)
He then could either duplicate that in his selections to move his station closer in format to the competitor, or intentionally avoid those selections to make it appear he has a wider variety of music on his station.
The data's out the
probably leverages govt. R & D (Score:3, Interesting)
Alternatively... (Score:2, Redundant)
You can type a phrase or two from the lyrics into the amazing Google [google.com] Intarweb Music Identification Service (it looks deceptively like the main Google page). I've had pretty good results that way.
Or you could use the Ask-Your-Music-Geek-Friend identification service, which is generally provided free of charge by your music-geek friends.
Sounds like another nifty-but-useless service that is probably laying the groundwork for something truly beneficial that is soon to come. Help for those with hearing or sp
Radio "RDS" Service (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Radio "RDS" Service (Score:2)
Missing feature: (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry, the song you are trying to ID is by... Brittany
[/Digital Operator type voice]
but... (Score:5, Funny)
AT&T still sucks...
I'd like to see when they introduce the new feature that allows me to actually make a call...and maybe a new feature that allows me to promptly speak with a customer rep.Re:but... (Score:4, Funny)
I'm not sure what you mean... My "outdated" AT&T TDMA phone is great. All of the other providers and technologies have phased out making calls, while introducing "features" such as surround sound ringtones, stamp-sized streaming pornography, camera, and The Mobile ARPAnet(TM).
Call me old fashioned, but I like the antiquated style of punching in a phone number, taking into a microphone, and listening for a response.
Re:but... (Score:2)
An elegant solution to a vexing problem? (Score:2)
Yeah, But does it... (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, But does it... (Score:2)
Still, posts on the Neuros forums (like this one [neurosaudio.com]) suggest that the feature works rather well. So you get unlimited uses of the ID feature for a $200 player--if you think you'll want to identify 200 songs over the course of a couple of years, that's like getting the Neuros player for free. Good deal.
And then afterwards (Score:2)
AT&T Cingular?
Cingular Wireless?
AT&Cingular?
Or more likely, given that Cingular bought AWS...
Cingular's bitch
The 900 call problem all over again. (Score:2)
singing in the shower (Score:3, Funny)
it'd probably come back with "don't quit your day job" by "at&t".
Good for contests (Score:4, Funny)
I have to say though, that I pity anyway who actually participates in these contests.
Music ID Service... cool but give me display (Score:2)
While I'm all for a comercial application for researching audio recognition, this form of service would not be nessicary if songs were either watermarked or had some form of ID tag associated with them, and radios had some form of decoder and display. Even an old
Indie and other non-mainstream? (Score:4, Interesting)
Susan Gibson [susansongs.com] wrote and originally recorded the song "Wide Open Spaces" It became a hit for the Dixie Chicks [dixie-chicks.com]. What happens if I put the phone to the radio while a station that knows the difference [khyi.com] is playing the original version?
Would an artist like Slaid Cleaves [slaid.com] or Mark David Manders [markdavidmanders.com], which you won't hear on your local corporate country channel, even be identified?
I suspect the music library won't be broad enough to support the people who actually care about the music enough to use the service.
Jesus Christ... just do what normal people do... (Score:2, Informative)
2) Get song title by searing for above lyrics on Google, add "lyrics" to end of search string.
3) Load iTunes to sample song and check other songs by Artist.
4) Download song on favorite P2P network (see www.zeropaid.com for many).
Re:Jesus Christ... just do what normal people do.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Amazing.. (Score:2)
If this was April 1st I would understand.
The article has been slashdotted so I can't read it - is there a tech article on the database or the technology behind this acheivement somewhere? A database which contains portions of every song would be fairly incredible, not to mention the fact that it is recognizing songs over a crackly phone line. Perhaps it is recog
so glad you could make it, now you really made it (Score:3, Interesting)
er, been doing that for years in UK with Shazzam Song Recognition thank you.
Is a computer really IDing it? (Score:3, Funny)
Pick up the pieces (Score:2)
Cellular add-ons (Score:2, Interesting)
I like it, but I fear that it'll get to the point where it's too hard to figure out how to access a given extra feature. Obviously they'll have to work on the UI to select from all these (marginally) useful features.
That said, I'm still just using my phone as a phone, so maybe they already have that solved, but I wouldn't know.
Missing something (Score:3, Insightful)
I love classical, but it's a real bitch figuring out the song names. Hell, most of the time it's something like: "Concerto No. 432, Op. 5341: Andante con margarine" or something equally lame. If this service could help me out with that, it would be worth a buck to me.
I've listened to brilliant classical works, and then the announcer comes on and says (in his heavily-tranquilized drawl) a bunch of words I've never freaking heard before. No doubt it's the name of some obscure foreign composer and the foreign conductor and the foreign symphony that played the tune, which has a name derived from latin. Great. That fucking helps me a bunch.
Oh, and that's another thing; the songs can go on forever. If he plays 3 or 4 movements it can easily be a half hour. Don't get me wrong; I love the station (no commercials!), and I love classical music, but can this service really tell the difference between Handel and Mozart? And for that matter, can it tell me which movement, and who is conducting? Please excuse my skepticism, but I seriously fucking doubt it. The idea is great, and it's useful to me since my tastes range from pop to ultra-obscure, but does it work?
P. Diddy (Score:2)
Much easier way (Score:2)
And when I touch you..." [google.com]
Music Analysis Toolkit (Score:2)
I'd be willing to bet this is based on lots of the same stuff.
Fails (Score:3, Funny)
I can remember what its called, just that its by a guy named John Cage - and is about 4 and a half minutes long...
Neat! (Score:2)
Still, fun technology. What would be more useful is a service that could listen to you hum or whistle tunelessly for a minute or two and figure out the song title from that.
It's Unlikely that it Would Work for Me (Score:2)
The Neuros MP3 player.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Shazam (Score:3, Informative)
Probably never. (Score:3, Interesting)
Like personalized ring tones and bust-your-thumbs instant messaging? B-)
They're TELEPHONE companies, dude!
They learned a long time ago that millions of customers dribbling in a buck here-and-there for "value added" services add up to BIG BUCKS! They COULD have provided this for free, as a convenient side-effect of the computers they used to cut the cost of their switching equipment. It's just a bunch of software hacks. But why give it away when they can
Does this tell you anything? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does the following tell you anything? (I'll leave it to the reader to decide "about what"... if anything.)
Let's see. Red Hot Chilli Peppers, yep. Ludacris, of course. AC/DC (even on the radio), check. Mary Wells (also on the radio), good to go.
Beethoven? Who the hell? "Moonlight Sonata???" Sure it was CD quality, but... Beethoven?
Re:Does this tell you anything? (Score:4, Interesting)
~S
Crying Strippers (Score:2)
Regarding your sig: A lapdance is so much better when the stripper is crying...
I think Peter Hand may have borrowed the phrase from The Bloodhound Gang [bloodhoundgang.com]. My copy of the liner notes is in my car with my chick at my kid's soccer practice, so I can't check, but the complete song lyrics can be found on their site [bloodhoundgang.com]. The song is great. It's on "Hooray for Boobies", a truly masterful album that also contains "The Ballad of Chasey Lain" and "The Bad Touch" (a song for which the AT&T service would be useful, si
language (Score:2)
Most of the music I buy is from other parts of the world. I count on altavista to provide me roughly translated lyrics if I can't find them elsewhere, but that wouldn't help me identify the tracks to know what to look for.
Google "ooooh, oooh, oooh, oooh, willa happy oooh, willa happy garrrl, willa happy ooohhh..."
Only in russian. Got any ideas?*
*See popular dance clu