Name that tune, from your cellphone
More dotcom ideas see the light of day as is obvious from this new company based in London according to this New York Times story (registration required). The UK is the third largest music market after the US and Japan and text-based messaging and services over the wireless networks is already a part of the cellphone-using culture.
The service, available only in Britain for now, works like this: A person dials a four-digit number on a cellphone and points it at a source of recorded music, be it the sound system in a nightclub or a commercial on television. Shazam's computers filter out the background noise and compare the audio sample with a database of 1.6 million songs, a process that takes less than a second. The service then fires off a text message to the phone, identifying the song and the artist. Each call costs 50 pence, or about 75 cents.
So far the name-that-tune service is simply that. There is no way to directly obtain the song in question, which company executives acknowledge is a drawback.
"We don't have a sustainable business if it's just a novelty," said Vijay Solanki, Shazam's marketing director, lounging on a huge beanbag in the company's low-key, dot-com-on-a-budget quarters near Piccadilly Circus. The trick, he and other Shazam executives say, is to turn the service into an everyday tool for a broader crowd — and into a conduit for music sales.