News

Do you know Midomi? "No, but hum it, and I'll see if I can pick it up..."

Loverly! Well, sort of...

Your ace reporter opened up a Web page. It said: "Sing!" and your reporter let rip with: "All I want is a room somewhere..." and pressed "done". In seconds, Midomi said: "Loverly!"

UK music lovers have been able to dial 2580 on their mobiles, and let Shazam listen to the music playing in the elevator, or cafe or pub, and - seconds later - getting a short message "text" saying what the tune is. Now an American web site has set up one that will recognise if you hum. Perhaps... your ace reporter can actually sing?

Well, not necessarily. The company behind Midomi, Melodis Corporation, issued a press release explaining the technology, earlier this week.

"With midomi.com we have created one of the most entertaining search engines on the web," said Keyvan Mohajer, CEO, Melodis Corporation. "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 favorite songs, the submissions immediately become part of the searchable MARS universe."

Multimodal Adaptive Recognition System (MARS) Search will be showcased on http://www.midomi.com/ and it doesn't just listen to the tune. It can also try to recognise the words, says Melodis.

The MARS Search "is the world's most scalable voice-activated music search technology because it extracts a variety of features from the tune including speech, pitch, tempo, and even the location of pauses," says the announcement.

MARS Search analyses each element independently and adapts to the stronger components. For instance, MARS Search takes speech content into account if the user sings the lyrics - but it ignores speech content if the user hums or whistles the song (well, duh!) instead.

With its next generation search tools, MARS Search "is the first search engine that can match human voice to human voice by analysing these multiple features.

"We are very excited to introduce this new technology into the market. It fills a necessary search void while allowing users to listen to thousands of songs," said Keyvan Mohajer. "MARS Search is the next step in adaptive sound recognition technology and provides an easier way to find the music you love. MARS Search will continue to grow in scale and capabilities with future applications."

Makes money? Yes, it does. It not only finds the song, but offers to sell a download to you for less than a dollar...