It can strike anywhere, at any time. It might have been belted out by Christina, Britney, or any number of Swedish pop outfits. You might have heard it in an elevator, in your car, even on someone else’s iPod. Fact is, one of the worst things about that annoyingly catchy tune you can’t get out of your head is that you don’t know its name.
But that’s about to change with the launch of www.midomi.com, a Web site that puts titles to the tunes you hum, sing or whistle into your computer’s microphone. The website relies on voice-activated search technology that analyses sounds and matches them against a music database.
Midomi.com also suggests links to songs that might appeal to the hummer, singer or whistler. “With midomi.com, we have created one of the most entertaining search engines on the web,” Keyvan Mohajer, CEO of Melodis Corp., said in a press release.
““Users of midomi.com will be able to both search our extensive database as well as help grow it; when a user tags (sings and saves) their favourite songs, the submissions immediately become part of the searchable MARS (Multimodal Adaptive Recognition System) universe.”
A test search correctly identified Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills” and Devo’s “Whip It,” but incorrectly identified Night Rider’s “Motoring” as Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.”
Two out of three ain’t bad (which, incidentally, the site also identified as the creation of the one and only Meat Loaf).
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