Friday, February 12, 2010

To Shazam

There should be a verb, to Shazam.

One of our favourite IPhone and Android apps is music identification software Shazam. When we hear a song and want to know what the song is, we merely Shazam it and it identifies it.

Shazam has announced that users can now create stations in Pandora which will include additional songs by the same artist and similar ones. If a song has been tagged, an icon appears in the "Tag Results" page which then takes the user directly to their radio station. The use of tags has also been linked to Last.fm to generate a list of upcoming shows based on the tagged artists and based on the user's location.

What Shazam is teaching us is the power of context, or information about the content or associated with it. In these cases the ability to extend past the track to others or to related concerts may have even more value and the search and discovery is not via a normal text search but by a sampling of the content itself.

2 comments:

Term Papers said...

I had to borrow my wife's car today. The good part- it is a much nicer car than mine. The bad part- it doesn't have an iPhone input jack.

j purdie said...

Off this topic but Google have defended their book settlement.

Quote 'Google, in its brief, said "the purpose of copyright law is to promote the creation and distribution of expressive works. The Amended Settlement Agreement advances this purpose as much as any case or agreement in copyright history."'

If that statement isn't challenged legally they would have carte Blanche to do what they want. I had no idea they thought like that. Copyright is all about promotion and distribution according to Google. Smacked is my gob.

Link: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/biz-tech/google-defends-book-settlement-calls-for-approval-20100212-nx5s.html

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/
biz-tech/google-defends-book-
settlement-calls-for-approval-
20100212-nx5s.html