How to find out the name of a song from a snippet of sound?
How many times have you come across a situation where you heard a great song on the radio or in a YouTube video, but did not know who sang it, and no one in the comments could say its name? In such a situation, various music recognition programs such as Tunatic, AudioTag, Shazam and Midomi will help you. In this article, we will review their main features, test them, and point out the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Shazam
An online music recognition service that doesn't require you to download a file. It is enough to press one button and the program will start listening to the track you want to find. The recording of a fragment is very fast - it takes less than 10 seconds to determine the artist. Before recording, the application asks permission to access your microphone.
The search results will show the title of the work, the name of the artist and the cover of the album. You will also be prompted to find a clip or purchase an mp3 file. It will be possible to watch all the songs from this album, listen to small 30-second excerpts to get acquainted with the opportunity to purchase the songs you like.
In order to start the search, just go to the site and download the file with the desired fragment or provide a link to it. The site developers recommend uploading tracks with a duration of 15 - 45 seconds, but no one forbids you to submit the entire song.
Supports work with MP3, WAV, OGG formats. At the top of the site there is a button to switch to Russian. If the quality of the passage is low and the robot cannot unequivocally determine the name, then it will offer several options.
The analysis takes place within 20-30 seconds. Unfortunately, if you heard music on the radio, you won’t be able to find it right away. Therefore, you need to have time to record a fragment. The developers claim that the robot will be able to cope even with poor quality recordings.
As a result of testing, the AudioTag service was able to find all five tracks. He easily coped with both last year's compositions and songs from ten years ago. The only drawback is the need to additionally record a snippet of the song and upload it to the site.
is a free desktop application. It can be installed under Windows and Mac OS operating systems. After a simple installation, a program window appears with the inscription “Tunatic ready. Click to identify song. Working with it is extremely simple - just press the white button with the image of a magnifying glass while the track is playing. After connecting to the server, the message “Identifying song. Please wait" - this program collects and sends data to the server to look for matches in the database. If your microphone does not work or the music is not heard, then the message “Signal too weak. Check your microphone. If the song is defined, then the name of the artist and its name will appear.
The test results are as follows: out of 5 foreign songs, only 3 were found. The search for each track takes about 45 seconds. I can't say if this is a regularity or an accident, but the tracks older than 2010 could not be identified.
conclusions
Summing up our review, I want to give Shazam the first place for almost instant recognition, as well as a wide range of solutions for both desktop computers and almost any mobile device. Second place goes to Midomi, who also quickly and accurately found the suggested tracks, and, moreover, is able to analyze recordings on the fly without the need to download files. Third place goes to AudioTag for identifying all passages, but with the ability to search only files saved on the computer. Fourth place goes to the Tunatic program for not having coped with all the works offered to it.