VentureBeat reports that Shazam [iTunes Link], an app that's long been a favorite among several TUAW staffers, is now offering a paid version. The $5 Shazam Encore (link opens iTunes) offers faster, unlimited tagging of music. A new mode designed for your car will tag whatever music is playing over the radio if you have your iPhone or iPod Touch hooked up to a car adapter. There are also recommendations based off existing tags, the ability to search Shazam's database, and more.

This new feature set does come at a cost to new users of the Shazam free app. New users can now only tag five pieces of music per month. The VentureBeat article adds that existing users of the free app can still tag with no limits.

[Via Macworld]

Shazam is one of the first apps I actually used in context on the iPhone, and while we haven't heard much about the app since it debuted way back in the early days of the App Store, apparently the company itself has been blowing up, thanks to the free app. They've picked up a nice round of investment from venture capitalists, and the service itself now boasts over 50 million users (by comparison, Last.fm claims only 30 million, but they've gotten way more press than Shazam's service, including recent integration on Xbox Live). That's a heck of an achievement, and Apple is a huge part of it -- not only did Shazam make a big splash on their iPhone app, but they say that Apple actually helped connect the VCs and the company together. That's an interesting peek behind the scenes at what Apple is doing for one of the App Store's oldest and most popular free apps.

As for why Shazam is so popular, the VCs say they can see the platform as a "springboard" for selling music, advertising, and a few other commodities. Currently Shazam's free app only lets you tag five songs a month (a limit I never hit and thus didn't know about, even though I would say that I do use the app regularly), but they're planning a paid version that will allow unlimited identification of songs through the iPhone's microphone. I don't know how well that will sell (it's hard to believe that people will pay $5 for a service they are already using for free, though perhaps I'm underestimating the amount of music that people want to "tag"), but it's clear that Shazam is a company that is making the absolute best of having an extremely popular free app on the App Store.

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.

The voting only went underway a while ago, but they've just announced the winners for the 2008 Best App Ever awards, celebrating (according to 148apps.com and the people they got to nominate and vote in their contest) the best iPhone apps of last year. As I said for the voting, you can probably take most of this with a grain of salt, but there's no question that there are some awesome apps in here, and probably at least one or two you'll be interested in checking out if you haven't yet.

Shazam won big in the "Best Overall", "Most Innovative," and "Best WOW" categories, and that is well worth it: Shazam is super reliable and works great as a "music recognizer." Rolando picked up "Best Game Graphics," and "Best Game Controls." Fieldrunners also picked up two awards for "Best Strategy Game" and "Best Long-play Game."

Unfortunately, the much-despised (by me) Ocarina won three total awards, including "Best 99 cent app" (I would have chosen Koi Pond over that one easily and that's one where Weightbot was made to win), but feel free to ignore me and my iPhone app crankiness. There are lots of great iPhone apps here (especially when you dive into the nominations), and overall, we're looking at the best of a terrific first year of iPhone development. Onward to 2009!

Picking my favorite iPhone apps was pretty straightforward. I went with three apps that save me time. The first one wows me because using it sort of feels like magic, and the other two are great mobile companion applications to wonderful Mac-based programs.


Shazam [iTunes link] Free

When I say using Shazam feels like magic, I'm not kidding. Shazam can listen to any music that is playing using the iPhone's microphone, and based on an acoustic fingerprint of the music can tell you the name of the song, artist, and album. It takes only seconds to listen, then a few more to look up the song and return results. Conveniently, Shazam maintains a list of songs that you've looked up (tagged, in Shazam's parlance) so that you can easily go back and follow up on the songs later. It also includes links to purchase the songs you've tagged from iTunes, as well as links to music videos for tagged songs if they exist on YouTube.

OmniFocus [iTunes link] $19.00

I have a particular preference for software that is available in desktop versions as well as mobile versions, particularly if they contain a solid synchronization function. While it can be somewhat of an acquired taste, OmniFocus on the Mac is arguably one of the most capable to-do list applications, particularly if you subscribe to the GTD methodology. Imagine my delight, then, when OmniGroup announced there would be an iPhone version of OmniFocus that synchronizes to the desktop version. What's even better is that the iPhone version isn't simply a clone of the desktop version, but includes iPhone-specific functionality such as being able to determine what context to display based on your physical location using GPS. As with all software that relies on remote synchronization, it can be a bit slow when starting up, but that's a hit you take to have the convenience of synchronization, it seems.

Evernote [iTunes link] Free

Evernote has been around for a long time as a capable Windows-based note taking product, but if ever there was an interesting story of a company re-inventing their product, this is it. Evernote in its modern capacity is a note-taking powerhouse, available on Mac, Windows, on the web, and on the mobile web. But even better, it also has an iPhone version. The beauty of Evernote is in its ability to capture various types of information easily, then make it searchable and easy to reference. Everything you store in Evernote is stored in an account for you on Evernote's servers, allowing them to apply advanced optical character recognition to your images and documents to make even non-text documents searchable. Like OmniFocus, Evernote can be a bit slow to start, and it's disappointing that Evernote's content is not stored locally on the iPhone, but is pulled down from their servers every time you access it. But for its ability to allow you to off-load important information to a secondary brain, Evernote is invaluable.


Honorable Mention

Given my attachment to synchronization apps, how can I not give a nod towards the iPhone version of NetNewsWire, which complements the entire stable of free NewsGator RSS clients, including NetNewsWire on the Mac. NNW would have made this write-up, had Steve not grabbed it first. But who can blame him?

As you might imagine, my iPhone is more littered with games than useful stuff like Steve's or Victor's. Sure, I've got Twitterific and NetNewsWire, but my most-used apps are of the video game variety.

The game that's most grabbed me so far is Aurora Feint. When it was first released, I didn't get much out of it, but since it's been updated a few times, Aurora Feint has turned into a pretty deep puzzle/RPG. There have been some security scares, unfortunately, and the game's "MMO" promises haven't yet come to fruition. But for sheer matching puzzle gameplay (it's similar to the great Poker Smash on Xbox Live), it's probably the most addictive game on the App Store.

My second favorite is Characters (I originally wrote about it on WoW Insider). If you play World of Warcraft and have an iPhone, this is the closest thing you'll find to an official Blizzard app. It lets you see every bit of information on the Armory in a very nice-looking iPhone app format. We're still waiting on Blizzard to provide us with an iPhone version of the in-game Auction House or mailbox, but until then, this is a great way to look up the WoW characters of folks you meet.

And finally, I've been really impressed with Midomi (and also the similar Shazam), a music recognition app. Hit the app, let it listen to a song you're hearing (or even you singing the song or saying the lyrics), and it'll tell you exactly what that song is. And once you've find it, you can listen to it, find it in iTunes or on Youtube, or see band pictures and reviews. Midomi is the kind of app I've never had on any other devices I've owned, and yet I've put it to great use a few times.

Honorable mentions go to Freeverse's (renamed) Moto Chaser, which is consistently the game that most impresses people playing with my iPhone; Trism, which turned out to be an excellent game, and Frotz and Sketches, both of which I've written about here before.

And I'm still waiting for two things: some great persistent pet gameplay (Wil Shipley, what happened to all of those ideas?), and some great location-based MMO gameplay as well. There's good stuff out there, but we're still just getting started in the App Store.