There’s an App for That: Shazam for the iPhone Review

5 stars

App: Shazam
Developer(s): Shazam Entertainment Ltd.
Size: 599 KB
Price: FREE

I first saw this App on an iPhone commercial. Initially, I thought that it was too cool to be true – an App that listens to a song, immediately tells you all the song info, and will let you buy it from iTunes right there? There is no way!

Turns out, there is a way, and it’s called Shazam. Not only will it tell you the song name and artist, but you can view the music video using YouTube, read the album review and the artist’s biography. You can attach your own photo to any song you’ve identified (what the App calls a tag), view where you tagged a song on a map, sort tags and e-mail a friend or Twitter about the tag.

I was impressed with Shazam; it recognized 18/20 songs from the radio, and 23/30 songs from my iTunes library (I tested out a few lesser-known artists). How far the iPod was from the speakers, the genre and whether the part of the song had lyrics in it or not didn’t seem to affect the result.

Shazam does have its downfalls, though. It’s ad-supported, but the ads are what make the App free, so it’s hard to complain about that.

Shazam requires a mic and a Wi-Fi or 3G internet connection to identify songs. Does this mean it's out of the question for us iPod Touch owners? Not necessarily. If you don’t mind carrying around a mic and waiting to find out what song you’ve tagged. I found a relatively cheap ‘ThumbTacks’ micro-microphone at London Drugs ($20). It’s small and works perfectly with Shazam.

Not having Wi-Fi isn’t a big problem either – the App automatically saves tagged songs until you reach a Hotspot.

Overall, Shazam is a cool App, and, despite its shortcomings, I’m giving it 5/5 stars.