S60 Application Review: Shazam ID

Shazam ID is available here.

Shazam ID is an application that assists you in identifying songs that you do not know I name of, whether that be in a club, film or TV music or simply just off the radio. You simply start the application and point it at the source of music for 30 seconds and it will identify the track. It does this by sending the clip to the Shazam servers to be analyzed via your phone’s data connection.

Here are some picture’s of it in action;

Me and my flat mate really tested the application out with his obscure music collection and some and the Asian tracks in mine. Overally out of 20 tracks we tested it with it simply could not identify one of them, which is pretty impressive I thought.

The Application does not simply identify your music, and also the option to see what tracks have been identified recently.

I think this is a fantastic feature to have as it means you can look at what other people have been tagging, the application also allows you to purchase the song you have just tagged as a ring tone or as a full track.

The application is great and I am very positive about it but for me there are two major flaws,

a) The first month is free to tag unlimited tracks but after that it will cost you £2.00 a month. Shazam also offer a service by simply dialling a number (2580) and you point your phone at the music and it will text you back and it costs 50p per a track or again a subscription of £2 a month.

b) The BIGGEST drawback for me is that you cannot send a clip later on, it is submitted straight away which is useless if you have no signal ( which is case in the lots of clubs in Manchester). If they built in the function to delay the sending of the track this is definatly a service I would use.

The application is good, however it does not offer any features that give you more of an incentive to use it instead of their phone service. All the extra things I have mentioned such as the iD chart are also available at their website. The only feature unique feature that the s60 application offers is to insert the song title and artist into a SMS, hardly worth the extra hassle in my opinion.

So overall although the application does exactly what you would expect it to, I feel their phone service is just as good value especaily if you tag less then 4 tracks a month.

NB If I had a Sony Ericsson there is no need for this application as it is inbuilt into most of their phones with no subscription service it is called Track ID. Nokia please make sure this is inbuilt into future phones please!

If you want to share an application with the readers or if you are a developer and you want to give your application some coverage then drop me a line (ricky@mobileindustryreview.com), and I will happily review it!