How to Name That Tune Buzzing in Your Head (Midomi.com)

midomi How to Name That Tune Buzzing in Your Head (Midomi.com)

We’ve all been through this – You find yourself humming a tune you just can’t get out of your head – you don’t know the title, the artist or any of the lyrics, so it just keeps rattling around in your head.

Midomi is a new service trying to build a comprehensive database of searchable music. So all you need to do is, sing, hum, or whistle a few lines, and it will tell you what that song is.

Delivers Accurate Results

Initial comments by TechCrunch suggested it still had some kinks to work out (It returned a Notorious BIG rap clip when they tried to find Amazing Grace!) – but because they are constantly refining the algorithms based on user submissions, it gets better over time. When I tried it recently, Midomi came out with 4 out of 5 right answers so I’m pretty happy with the results.

Record Your Own Versions and Listen to Others With Similar Music Tastes

More than just a search engine, you can record your favorite songs online and share them with your friends. You can also listen to and rate others’ musical performances, and interact with other members. In short – a social network built around singing.

If you fancy yourself the next American Idol, perhaps it might pay to share a few tunes with the community and get some feedback first :)

Needs More Competitive Features

I know this site is not positioned as an online karaoke, but the lack of lyrics and background music really made a big difference when trying to do my own recordings (I had to search for lyrics on another site before attempting to sing).

Most Internet users aren’t really interested in helping to build a searchable music database. So getting these types of features in would be essential especially given the success of indirect competitors offering online karaoke services like Singshot and Ksolo.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is this – the search engine works well, and it gives ordinary people a chance to collaborate to create a searchable music database and reach out to the world with their singing – and for that I say kudos to Midomi!

Disappointed

It didn't work for me. I just spent almost an hour and it matched nothing except "happy birthday". I tried very popular songs, too. My singing skill is average.

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James Yeang

@Disappointed: maybe it was the background noise ...it continues to work very well for me

stefanobeck

MIDOMI is good only for music people.

Haha - thanks Lola... well as I said, it's a service that improves over time based on user contributions... that review is a few weeks old.

Hey it got 4 out of 5 correct for me, and I know many others who have the same good experience :)

Would be interested in what results others are getting?

Lola

Well take a look at what I found on the web.

My Review of Midomi
Posted on January 29th and has 3 comments
Filed Under: personal

Midomi is an online service that lets you hum or sing a song into your computer microphone and it will supposedly recognize the song and tell you the title, artist, blah, blah, blah.

Cool, right?

So I tried it out and sang a few bars to "You are not alone" by the genius that is R. Kelly. It guessed that I was singing "Oh Come, All Ye Faithful".

Ok. It's a new service, let me try a more reconizable song. I sang "SexyBack" by JT and Midomi thought I was singing "The Farmer In The Dell". Wow.

I understand that I am not exactly Andrea Bocceli. I understand that I am not even on the level with people who are "going to Hollywood, dawg" on American Idol, but I can hum a song.

At this point I thought that maybe this service is so new that my songs are not in the database. Since it thought my last attempt was "The Farmer In The Dell", I tried actually singing singing "The Farmer In The Dell".

It said I was singing "As Long As You Love Me" by the Backstreet Boys.

I hate you midomi.

I would love to hear your results from using this service. Please post them in the comments.

Postscript: My wife (who apparently thought I was recording a music video or some sort) informed me that I was lame and needed a better song. She also said, "that's terrible".

3 comments ( Comments are open )