Loading ...This is a two for one review today. Because Shazam and Midomi Mobile are functionally similar (yet fundamentally different) I thought I'd group them to give you a bit of a side by side comparison. 
For starters we have Shazam. This is a nifty little program that lets you "tag" songs that you like or want to know the name of. All you do is hold the phone up to a speaker, TV or wherever the music is coming from and select "Tag Now." The app will listen and then consult its library to identify the tune. When I used this, it worked pretty well, though I used an MP3 recording of Mika's "Grace Kelly." Even so, the results appeared quickly and accurately.
Midomi Mobile offers more functionality, though at a price. You can hold the phone up to a speaker or TV to identify music with this app as well, but you can also hum or sing a tune. This is especially helpful when you remember just a snippet of a song. You can even say a song name or artist name and it will bring up a list.
However, when I tried--however badly--to sing a bit of Ah-ha's "Take On Me" I was greeted with a list of songs in Spanish. Hmm. I wouldn't let my singing voice be the best judge here, but the app did crash about three times in the midst of searching.
I like both apps, and though Midomi does more, I think Shazam does less better.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree with everything you said — but what I want to know is, how the hell are they doing this? I’ve been a programmer for decades, and I’m still stunned how well this works. I’ve had people sing into my iPhone with the most god-awful, out of key vocalization you can imagine, and the thing still Names That Tune.
Anyone familiar with the technology behind this?
Shazam works BIZARRELY well. I was across the room watching a movie and tried Shazam, while my friends were talking AND there was a little dialogue in the movie, and it still knew the song!
I haven’t been able to get Midomi to recognize a song once, but it’s pretty good if you hum or sing a song I think.
I love Shazam - and for the most part it worked really well. However, this morning when I was showing it off to my wife — “talking” while Shazam was trying to “listen”, the result came back unsuccessful. Has anyone tried getting it to work with other sounds in the room?
Shazam works great. The other day I was at a gas station (in downtown Nashville) that has about 10 pumps. All of them were being used, and there was 5 o’clock rush hour traffic in the street right next to me. I could hear Ramblin’ Man playing from the speakers about 15 feet above me and decided to test out Shazam while the gas pump finished molesting my wallet. About half way through the identifying process a large tracker trailer with obnoxiously loud squeaky breaks screeched to a stop. Shortly after my phone vibrated, and seconds later “The Allman Brothers Band - Ramblin’ Man” popped up on my screen. Color me impressed. I’ve only gotten Midomi to work once, and that was one a pop song played clearly over my home stereo with out back ground noise. I was also able to get it to identify an Edi Brickell song by singing it, but none of the other ones I tried worked. In between these two successes I had about 15 crashes. To summarize: Shazam rocks! Midomi sucks!
Midomi GRAB works great. The accuracy has been 100% for me. I was in LA and was listening to KTNQ and midomi found all the songs it was playing.
My son used the say/sing part and it also found the singer and the songs. The singing part was a lot of fun.
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