411-SONG

A few months ago I met with Ashley Heather of the White Space Group to talk about potential business opportunites with some of the mobile media companies in his incubator.  He happened to mention that one of his prior mobile media projects was a service called 411-SONG.  Though technically still in beta, 411-SONG is a service that allows you to call a toll-free number - (866) 411-7664 - to identify any song you hear playing.  After calling the number and letting the phone pick up roughly 15 seconds of the song, you'll receive an SMS/text message momentarily with the track and artist name. I was pretty intrigued so I tried it right after we met which was back in May. When I decided to test it out I was sitting at my computer and just played the first song I saw in my iTunes, which happened to be Bruce Hornsby's "Gonna Be Some Changes Made".  411-SONG got it exactly right and was extremely prompt.  I believe the first song ID might have been free, but all subsequent IDs are $.99 and are billed through your wireless carrier.  The service also tries to provide value to the user as well as generate revenue by linking to ringtones for the songs identified.  This did not work well on my first attempt as the link embedded in the SMS did not load the correct page on my Treo 600.  The 411-SONG website now says buying ringtones from the SMS only works for AT&T and Cingular Wireless customers.

I didn't use the service again for another two months because I just didn't have the need.  But then this weekend I was in my car listening to Q104.3 (sadly the only decent radio station in the NYC metro area) and I heard a classic rock song that I'd heard on this station a few times before and really liked but had no idea what it was.  So I whipped out my Treo, dialed the number (I should really put in my Favorites or Contacts), put the phone on speaker and then it hung up when it was done.  A few seconds later I found out that "'Cause it's time, it's time in time with your time and its news is captured. For the queen to use." are lyrics to the Yes song "I've Seen All Good People: Your Move/All Good People". I was psyched to know the track so I could download it from iTunes later on.

There are other services that do the same thing.  Rocket Mobile has a BREW application available on certain Verizon Wireless phones called Song IDentity.  The cost is also $.99 though there's a slight discount if you prepay for larger numbers of IDs. In my opinion, though I'm a big supporter of downloadable applications for mobile phones (wink, wink), it just doesn't seem necessary in this instance when you can just call a phone number and know that you only pay if the service can identify your song.