Filed under: Multimedia, Software, Freeware, iPhone, App Store
Shazam updated to 1.7, adds location awareness
Shazam is an app that's been on my iPhone since the beginning, and in fact, everyone should have it. Besides the fact that it's free, it's useful in a very innovative way: if you hear a song anywhere that you don't know the artist or name of, just pull up the app to hear it, and it'll tell you what you're listening to. I still use it occasionally to find new music that I hear and like out in the world, but I never really paid attention to updates -- they usually just got included in my monthly or so "download all updates" click. Apparently Shazam's been updating something fierce, however, and the newest version has all kinds of functionality that you might not expect.At some point, they added in Twitter integration, so if there's a tune you want to share that way, you can do so. There's always been a way to share them via email, too, and they've spruced that up a bit by calling it a "postcard" (conveniently also giving your friends a chance to buy the music you hear, and probably put some change in Shazam Entertainment Ltd.'s pocket -- it is a free app, after all). But the most interesting new feature is that Shazam now tracks your location when you "tag" a tune, so that eventually, you'll be able to look at a map of where you found all this new music you like.
Sure, it wasn't exactly a pressing feature, but it is cool to see your "musical journey," and have that information about not only what you tagged but where you tagged it. Shazam is an app that's probably on your iPhone already, but it's worth another look.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Look said 10:24AM on 6-19-2009
"Useful"..It's insane. Mayby the best use of home computing power/intelligence i have ever seen.
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ShaneD said 10:42AM on 6-19-2009
I still prefer Midomi.
It's also been updated a bunch, and also includes GPS and Twitter features, as well as Facebook.
But even better, it also let's you search for songs in other ways than just listening to it.
Midomi amazingly let's you hum or sing a song yourself, and it will almost always still find it! It also let's you type in a keyword, artist, lyric, etc and will do a search. All of these are great when you are trying to think 'who sings that song that goes like this...' ?
Much more flexible that limiting you to only find the song while it's playing over some speakers.
Plus, Midomi has been doing a ton of search optimizations. So the app runs about 4 times faster than it use to in finding songs, and runs much faster than Shazam now. In fact, it's so much faster and offers so many features, I finally stopped using Shazam at all and deleted it from my iPhone.
If you haven't given Midomi a try, you should.
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Randy said 6:00PM on 6-19-2009
I also have Midomi. I find it to be much better that Shazam.
Gazoobee said 10:53AM on 6-19-2009
I have always thought Shazam was a fantastically handy app even though it fails to identify a song roughly 50% of the time for me. This new version (1.7) is absolute junk though.
First off, they have added advertisements, which considering the fact that they make their money elsewhere are not only not necessary, they give you the feeling that Shazam's authors are just greedily raking in all the cash they can get.
Secondly, this version crashes pretty much every time I try to recognise a song now. What's worse, it seems to be mixing up the results. It will say it's "song x" by "group y" and when I look it up on iTunes there is no such combination??? WTF?
Who cares *where* the heck you were when you heard a song?
Who cares if it has the functionality to tweet? What am I gonna do, tweet about every cool song I hear and give a link to Shazam so people can purchase the song? Why the f*ck should I want to do that? Who benefits other than the music company and your personal vanity?
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SpinThis! said 11:04AM on 6-19-2009
Holy crap, someone get this guy some valium or something. Did you miss your morning coffee? Great, so you don't like the app... why waste energy griping about it?
Ads have been in earlier than that... I thought more like 1.2 or so.
Greed? I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. You gotta keep the lights on somehow, especially with the app's popularity. Servers and bandwidth don't grow on trees regardless of how they "make their money elsewhere."
Google has ads—that must mean they're greedy too right?
alansky said 11:13AM on 6-19-2009
Personally, I think Shazam is fantastic. Just imagine what life would have been like if we'd had toys like this when we were kids!
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shickonannon said 2:57PM on 6-21-2009
god thats creepy, I shazaammed the same song yesterday.
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Jim said 12:39PM on 6-19-2009
I agree, midomi all the way!!
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darley said 4:33PM on 6-19-2009
The 1.7 update has totally made the app useless.
1) when I press tag now the app looks like it is working, then crashes upon completion. When I open the program back up the song IS there.
2) when I touch a song to see more information, I get a screen telling me it could not tag the song.
3) the cd artwork that used to show up along with the name and artist on the landing page no longer show up.
4) sporatically, the app will begin listening and then tell me that I do not hAve a microphone connected.
5) there are no settings for the app in the app itself or in settings, so no Twitter or location tagging.
Anyone know wassup with this?
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darley said 7:19PM on 6-19-2009
Found another person with this same problem on the MacRumors forums.
Rwilson said 11:59PM on 7-02-2009
I have the exact same problem. I was thinking "wait i dont have those new features, and it crashes all the time" can you link the article that fixes this?
Jo Brice said 2:52AM on 6-20-2009
Midomi is complete rubbish and doesn't work on most music I put into it. The humming/singing feature has NEVER worked for me.
If you look at the number of comments and support Apple give Shazam over Midomi you kinda know which one is the king (they did a TV ad ffs).
Why do people tweet what they just ate for breakfast. People like sharing what they do.
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Daniel said 7:46AM on 6-21-2009
This app sounds great, I'm putting it on my shopping list...
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Jason Kind said 2:20AM on 6-25-2009
They basically copied the latest tunewiki update for android.
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