Shazam (service)

Shazam is a commercial mobile phone based music identification service, headquartered in London, England.

Shazam's oldest service is the 2580 service, accessible only in the United Kingdom (much like the Pandora music service is accessible only from the United States) customers dial the shortcode 2580 from their mobile phone and hold the phone to capture any music playing in the background. The service analyzes the captured sound and from this produces a match, the result is sent to the customer in the form of an SMS customers are charged for the call to the shortcode and are charged for any successfully matched (tagged) tracks. The service does not work with classical music or live performances.

Shazam is also a free application for the Apple iPhone. It does the same thing as most phones, but does not text the response. Instead the result is shown on the screen complete with details on Artist, Album, Title, Genre, Music label, a thumbnail image of the song/album artwork, links to download the song in iTunes and, where relevant, show the songs' video on YouTube. A similar application is available for Java compatible handsets (where the handset's JVM can record sound from the handset's microphone) called ShazamiD. ShazamiD differs from the iPhone application in that ShazamiD is a subscription service and only available in the UK (customers currently pay £2.00 per month and must text a shortcode to receive a link to the midlet), whereas Shazam for iPhone is a free application available in a number of countries.

References

http://www.shazam.com/music/web/pages/getshazam.html