[Macworld]

Post your comments for Review: Shazam for iPhone here

[AnubisIV]

This article seems a bit overly critical to me. While, admittedly, there are some gaps in their database, those gaps that I've noticed seem to be confined to specific genre, and it's worked fine in nearly every other case I've tried it. I had an Indian coworker throw some Hindi tracks at it and it nailed all of them flawlessly, and my younger brother, who loves little-known indie music, found that Shazam was able to nail every one of the tracks we tried (it even got one of his tracks right when he thought it was something else). I have some rather strange tastes in music (anime and video game soundtracks, many of which are imported), so it only identifies maybe 5-10% of my tracks, but for everyone else's music I've tried, it's worked great.
Were you using it under poor conditions, such as with lots of background noise, or perhaps with the microphone pointed away from the sound source? I know they say that it can handle background noise, such as talking, rather well, and in my experience, a minor amount of talking or other noise has not had a significant impact on the ability of Shazam to identify music, but I suppose it might impact its performance.
Personally, my biggest complaint (aside from the fact that it recognizes almost none of my music), is the interface, which seems to be rather unusual to me.

[Lentako]

Wow. Ben Boychuk, your review is garbage. Shazaam works 95% of the time for me. 33 of 60?? Are holding your thumb over the mic?
I was watching a hockey game on TV the other night and while the announcers were talking and the fans were cheering shazaam had no problem telling me what song was playing on the PA in the rink.
Your review: One half mouse out of five.

[Ken_Miracle]

I have been pleasantly surprised at the accuracy of the app. I've identified songs from faint department store loudspeakers as well as from my car radio. In fact, I haven't had it to miss one yet.

[SpinThis!]

Shazam never claimed to be 100% accurate with all types of music. And why Macworld even bothers to review free applications is beyond me; you generally get what you pay for. At least with Shazam it can be quite useful at times.

I've found the volume level of your ringer/speaker seems to have an effect on how it IDs songs as well. If it's all the way down, the sensitivity of the mic goes down as well, at least on my first-generation iPhone. I'm not sure if that's a bug or if that's the way iPhone's speaker/mic system works, etc. I've had success IDing music in pretty loud bars as well but of course you mileage will vary.

[reflexologist]

Strange. I showed off Shazam to a friend in his car. He played six obscure tracks (not hits) from his iPod and Shazam got every one. They're still on my phone, eg Boston, Toto, Eagles, Jet, Aztec Camera, Linkin Park. Sad but true. Maybe the reviewer hasn't figured out how to use it properly.

[haplo53]

I too have found Shazaam to be very reliable, surprisingly even in less-than-ideal situations. I must admit that I have not tried to tag classical music, but it's nailed songs from many different genres for me (including jazz).

I would agree with Ben in that the seemingly random distinction between songs that have links to the itunes store and those that don't is mystifying and maddening.

Other than that, I've been very happy with this app. I like it a lot more than midomi.

[Koowan]

My results have been very disappointing. So far the app has correctly identified ZERO songs I have tested. That's right -- none, nada, zilch. I tested songs by the Clash, Nirvana and even the Beatles using several different sound systems, I varied the distance from the speakers, I changed the iPhone's own speaker volume and even altered the EQ of the songs to see if that helped. It didn't. I also tried a few classical selections and even the original theme from Star Wars (which it identified as a song from Radiohead) and it never once correctly identified any of these songs either. Personally, since it was free I don't really care, but other posters here should cut the reviewer a bit of slack. It's obvious this app works sometimes for some people, so just because you got good results doesn't mean everyone does.

[TerenceOB]

I generally like Shazam, but it amused me greatly that when I held my iPhone up to my TV during the commercial featuring Shazam, it could not identify the music.

[Snaab]

I am amazed at what Shazam is able to accomplish, given the sheer mass of information it must process to do its job. I've had it successfully identify songs with very obscure non-vocal samples of intros, interludes, etc. I had it identify the jazz music playing quietly in the background in a noisy restaurant. Amazing! But you have to realize that Shazam is not only an iPhone app. The company has been around for over five years, and the app is available for other platforms, Android included. These other platforms don't work with iTunes, so Shazam points you to other music sellers such as Amazon.

The biggest problem I have is not being able to get Shazam booted and sampling before the song ends. If it's a broadcast radio station, I find that another free iPhone app (that is also on other platforms) "ClickonRadio" has a high probability of filling in the gap by identifying the radio station's playlist for the past hour. ClilckonRadio also links you to sources to buy the music.

That said, I see Shazam and ClickonRadio as revolutionary marketing tools, which I would not even have imagined ten years ago.

[dcpics]

The only songs I've found so far that have stumped Shazam are some holiday tunes.

I played a version of a song that has been recorded by numerous artists with the same arrangement and many times very close vocals and it was able to properly identify the right singer.

[kimhill]

This review is way too negative. Is Ben perhaps an indie fan with an elitist attitude?
I've used Shazam for all kinds of non-mainstream/older music, and have been consistently impressed. 2.5 stars is an absurd rating for the iPhone app that gets more impressed reactions than any other app.
Shazam developers: Don't take this review seriously! I mean, don't get complacent- keep improving Shazam -- but MacWorld has screwed up here.

[BenBoychuk]

I expected much of this criticism. I'll answer as many of the points as I can.
@AnubisIV: I sampled at least 200 songs over a wide range of genres under pretty favorable conditions (i.e., quiet, no kids) in my house. Although, I will admit that I didn't have any Hindi tracks to test. Maybe that would have improved the percentages slightly.
@Lentako: Nope, I wasn't holding my thumb over the mic. Thanks for the review. It's an honor.
@reflexologist: See my reply to AnubisIV. I spent hours with Shazam. Hours of my life I will never get back.
@haplo53: Thanks. I didn't try classical music because there is just so much of it out there, with hundreds -- even thousands -- of different recordings of the same piece. I did sample some jazz tracks. Again, very much hit and miss.
@Koowan: Are you sure you weren't holding your thumb over the mic?
@TerenceOB: I'm kicking myself for not thinking of that!
@Snaab: Look, you're right that insofar as the technology even exists, that's something to be said for Shazam. For what it's worth, I had planned to give the app an even lower rating than I did.
@dcpics: Shazam is hit and miss when it comes to standards. I have several versions of Stardust. Shazam ID'd some but not others.
@kimhill: Not a great indie fan, but I will plead guilty to the charge of elitism.
Bottom line: I appreciate many of the comments here, and I thank everyone for taking the time to post their feedback. (Even Lentako.) But I stand by the review.

[karlfranz]

I think your review is a bit too harsh. When you think about the tech involved in making Shazam work and how fast it tags a song, it's impressive that it works at all. I have worked extensively with optical and speech recognition engines and most only wish they could be this accurate. My percentage of correct tags has been much higher than your results would indicate, although I must admit that, lately, the number of "untag-able" songs seems to be higher than when I first started using the app months ago.
However, I have been able to put Shazam to the test in some pretty harsh environments with spectacular results. During the holiday season I was at a Kohl's department store and used Shazam to correctly tag every X-Mas song that was playing through the store's muzac system while standing about 30-50 feet away from the nearest ceiling-mounted speaker.
Also, you incorrectly state in your review:
"Shazam requires a Wi-Fi or 3G connection to work."
Shazam also works with Edge and the speed of its results is surprisingly quick for such a slow nework.