» posted on 3:55am - November 20 2008 | posted by Lev

www.shazam.com

My mom recently referred me to this awesome piece of software. I've only been using it for fun and to test how accurate it is, but the concept is extremely creative, and tries to solve a situation all of us have been in.

The scenario: you hear a song on the radio you like (okay, just pretend with me for a second), and you want to know the name of it but they play a bunch of songs back to back and never say what it was called.

Shazam to the rescue!

Now I only have used this software on the iPhone, so my experience is going to be based around that.

Hold your iPhone near your radio and let Shazam do its thing for a few seconds. Less than a minute later, it will tell you what song you are listening to!

It's incredibly accurate and has only failed a few times out of more than 50 different experiments. Oh, and I should mention, I have taste in some unusual or unpopular groups, so the fact that it was able to identify these was amazing.

Here's a list of all the songs I was able to identify when doing some tests (please don't laugh at the fact that I actually have some of these on my computer):

Fresh prince of bel air theme song
sex pistols - revolution in the class room
social distortion - prison bound
the unseen - social security
ramones - journey to the center of the mind
raised fist - stand up and fight
propagandhi - war is peace
propagandhi - haillie sellasse, up your ass
pennywise - wouldn't it be nice
the misfits - astro zombies
gg allin - bit it you scum
dead kennedys - holiday in cambodia
bad religion - sensory overload
against all authority - ska sucks
afi - a single second
absurd minds - brainwash
cher & beavis and butthead - i got you babe
inner circle - bad boys
nofx - herojuana
walter carlos - a clockwork orange theme
beethoven - 9th symphony, second movement
dropkick murpheys - get up
shadowy men on a shadowy planet - having an average weekend
powerman 5000 - operate annihilate
adam sandler - the chanukah song
monty python - every sperm is sacred
vadals - people that are going to hell
refused - liberation frequency
bob marley - african herbsman
beatles - where my guitar gently weeps
beatles - magical mystery tour
jimmy cliff - use what i got
ub40 - red red wine
steve kekana - raising my family
inner circle - sweat
peter tosh - johnny b goode
ziggy marley - look who's dancing
ace of base - all that she wants
bob marley - redemption song
beatles - rocky raccoon
weirld al yankovic - amish paradise
the byrds - mr. tambourine man
eric cartman - kyle's mom is abitch
stan, kyle, eric - what would brian boitano do?
narnia soundtrack - raid on the castle

As you can see, they have a pretty damn impressive database if it is capable of identifying that much crap (kidding - well, partly).

The only things I couldn't get identified are:

reagan youth
"still alive" from the half-life portal game
adam sandler - ode to my car
switchblade symphony

If you want to have fun impressing your friends by pretending you know everything you hear, check out this application because it is incredibly accurate - and best of all: FREE!

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