My favorite iPhone apps - Shazam

TC
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True Story.
I'm watching the Orlando Magic vs. Boston Celtics game the other night and during the commercial break this extremely catchy song comes on. In the past what I would do is listen for the hook, Google the phrase and filter through the results. Normally that's a fail safe plan, but this tune had very few words. A few minutes later I remember that I have Shazam on my iPhone ( one of the problems with having 6 pages of apps is you misplace 1 or 2). So I rewind the DVR back to the commercial and use the Tag Now function. Within seconds I have the song title "Make My Day" by the group Waldeck, Waldecks discography, a link to the You Tube video for the song and the bands biography.
This reminds me if the 1st time I saw Pandora (write up coming soon.) The 1st thing that comes to mind is 'This thing really works.' Some of the free apps make you want to donate money just so they take it down, never to return. I'm just sayin.
Shazam is pretty straight forward. As long as you can hear the song fairly clearly, the app can hear the song well enough to send you results. I usually point the iPhone speakers in the direction of the music source to help things a bit. I am truly amazed every time it works, because of it's speed and accuracy. I will say it has a hard time with mainstream jazz (Dizzy, Monk, Coletrane). I don't hold it against them though. The jazz catalog is huge, diverse and notorious for being pretty closed to "outsiders". I have a hunch that some of the classics are either poorly cataloged or purposefully obscure in some cases. But that's a story for another day.
A really nice/useful touch is that all of your past returned results are cataloged and can be perused at your convenience through the My Tags (default) screen. Each result is linked to the iTunes store so that you can purchase the single from your iPhone. Also Shazam gives you a link to the lyrics so you can polish up before karaoke night. If that's your thing.
Being the music lover I am, I can honestly say that this is one of the best iPhone apps that I have seen so far. When given the "What could they possibly make better?" test, I can't think of anything major. A minor thing would be to have some type of agreement with Pandora so that I could create a station from a tag. Maybe I'll twitter that and see what happens. One day I'll dig a little deeper into the science behind this top notch app. For now all I'll say is it's really good, get it and use it.
TC

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