WEBSITE OF THE DAY – shazam.com

A website that puts an instantaneous stop to that awful “it’s on the tip of my tongue” feeling.

17 November 2006 0:00 GMT / By Ian Hughes

Today’s website of the day is shazam.com the savour of many a music fan’s sanity.

You’re in a bar / club / traffic jam / supermarket / elevator* (*delete as applicable) and you hear a song come over the airwaves. You like it. You tap your foot. You think you’d quite like to purchase said music, but you’ve no idea what it is.

Aha, you think. I remember that neat trick a while ago with the mobile – you dial a number and hold it up and within half a minute they text you the title and the artist. It was clever then and it’s still very clever and Shazam have branched out a bit on their website recently. The developments make the whole experience of discovering new music a bit more accessible.

We particularly like the Explore feature. Type in your current favourite artists or track title and Shazam will show you other stuff you might like. Perhaps you’re a fan of the nonsensical Icelandic warblings of Sigur Ros. Type it in and you might find other musical avenues to wander down.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what the trick with the mobile is, it’s simply to dial 2580 and hold your phone up to the music source for 20 seconds. If they find a match using their clever little algorithm, they send you a tag back at the cost of 50p.

Well worth it in our books. Nothing worse that wandering around all day with a tune in your head not knowing what it is. No more standing in HMV singing “it goes like this” flatly to a very unimpressed shop assistant

www.shazam.com

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