Click to identify song

I remember a couple of years ago a mobile-phone service that was being hyped at the time. The idea was that you held your phone up to a music source, and it texted you back the artist and song name, of course the disadvantage was that it cost quite a bit. I’m sure that service is still out there somewhere, but I found a free alternative today whilst trying to cheat (sshhh) on a radio competition.

Tunatic is a free piece of software for your Mac or PC that uses your computer’s built in microphone (or external one) to listen to a track and then give you the artist and song name.

I found it quite fun to play around with this morning, it picked up most tracks as I was randomly shuffling through radio stations. It did tend to get stuck on tracks that weren’t exactly mainstream however, for example it correctly analysed Duffy’s new single Warwick Avenue but couldn’t identify Bonnie Tyler’s I Need A Hero (it was playing on Magic).

Either way, it’s a fun app and will entertain you at least for a half hour, chucking as many tracks as you can at it to try and fool it. You can also help out with improving Tunatic’s database of songs, if you please, by downloading Tunalyzer (Mac only). An app that scans your music library and sends track info back to it’s servers, helping other Tunatic users with their song indentifying.

Best of all, it’s free.

Andrew.