Members Mr. Botch Posted December 18, 2006 Members Share Posted December 18, 2006 I'm being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, and will probably be getting my first cell-phone after the holidays. In collecting brochures from the various companies, I noticed this blurb in Virgin Mobile's prepaid phone options: Song ID: Hold your phone up to almost any song that's playing, dial *43, and hit Send. We'll text you back with the song title and artist name. For real! That would be quite a trick, if it worked. Does anyone here use VM, and does this feature work as advertised? Any idea how they do it? Is it computer recognition with a huge database, or a bunch of guys in India immersed in Western musical culture?This won't be a deciding factor in my final selection, but it would be kind of a neat trick if it actually works, and a feature I even use maybe twice a year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 19, 2006 Members Share Posted December 19, 2006 I don't know the particulars of Virgin's service but the PC system audio recorder Replay Music does a pretty good job of recognizing individual songs. [Replay Music is sometimes referred to as a "stream ripper" -- but it actually records your system audio and allows you to save it as either an uncompressed wav file or in various mp3 formats -- it doesn't defeat any DRM, so as long as it's used for Fair Use provision recording (ie, for personal use only), you're on the up and up.] Replay Music has a brief blurb about the technology somewhere but it's pretty vague as I recall. I believe the music recognition service is used by other companies, as well, and repackaged to their customers. But I can say it doesn't work by file IDs, file sizes, etc, since it never sees whatever the source files were, streamed or otherwise. I was recording a friend's band on a local college station's internet feed and Replay Music actually recognized a couple records they played waiting for the band. (And didn't recognize others, even a couple of non-obscure ones. So, the tech ain't perfect. But it WAS pretty gee whiz... It supposedly works with regular radio, records, etc.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff Leites Posted December 19, 2006 Members Share Posted December 19, 2006 Not to change the topic, but we needed another cell phone just for the occasional, "I'm running late", "Where you at?", and possible emergency calls..... just zero to a few minutes a month. I checked serveral of the prepaid type deals, and found VM to be the best. I bought the phone on line from VM, and got $20 worth of free air time which covered the cost of a basic phone, signed up for automatic purchase of $20 worth of airtime every 3 months (or if it hits $5 first), which keeps the phone active, and gave me another free $5 of air time. I signed up for the 18 cents a minute plan, which would be high if the phone was used a lot, but since it's not, the cost comes out to less then $7 a month. Also, since it's kept active, the unused air time balance is rolled over. My only gripe is the ring tones. I'd like it to sound like a phone... warble, or ring. The least offensive ringtone that came with it was "Low Rider". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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