I’m sure it’s happened to everyone at some point.  You’re in the car or in a bar and you hear some some.  You realize you like the song and ask the obvious questions: whose song is this?  What group/artist plays it?

Midomi Music Identifier and Search ( Ultra), developed by Melodis Coporation, is an application that will help us get an answer to these questions. This is a program that recognizes songs and serves as a seeker of songs and artists.

Last year, I read about some similar software called Listen. I could not test it, so when Midomi appeared this year in the App Store, I thought I would have to give it a shot.  And, since we’re doing reviews of iPhone music applications, this one fits in perfectly!

How it works

MELODIS is the creator of the Sound2Sound™ Search Science, a - according to the author - proprietary methodology that searches sound against sound, bypassing traditional sound to text conversion techniques even when searching text databases. Using S2S, Midomi extracts “features” of sound to our “Crystal” language. Crystal creates compact and simplified representation of sounds, words and phrases. The searchable database is also converted to “Crystal” Format and able to ingest multiple sound and input types: text, speech, singing, music. Follow this link, and you can see a simplified scheme.

Does it really work?

Now that we know the technical side, let’s turn to the question many of you are asking: does it work?  The answer is…YES, and very well! The interface is simple and intuitive, with just 3 buttons. One big and orange to activate the “songs” detector, another to say the name of an artist or song and one for text input. Now, let’s break it down…

• Recognition of songs

I made a series of tests to analyze the behavior of Midomi.

1. I chose 20 songs randomly in the following languages: Spanish, English, French and Portuguese (Midomi is compatible with many, many languages) and have noted those recognized:

  Spanish: 17, ie 85% correct.
  English: 20, ie, 100% correct.
  French: 20, ie, 100% correct.
  Portuguese: 15, ie, 75% correct.

Not bad, eh? I wanted to go further and picked some “difficult” songs. The behavior is still very good in English and French (I was surprised it recognized some), and fairly good for Spanish and Portuguese songs. I also did tests with original songs and different covers, to see if distinguished artists. It did that well, too.

In the help section, it says Just hold your iPhone up to a speaker, but I found that if there is not much ambient noise, it is not necessary. I also noticed that it takes longer to recognize (or even not recognize), songs recorded live.

If you don’t detect a song on the first occasion, try it a few times. I have found that some songs are detected with the first chords, but not others.

As for recognition when we sing or when we hum, the behavior is more unpredictable. I sing very badly, so the percentage of hits was about 50%. I have tested with other people and songs that I did not recognize when I sang them, it did for others.

• Title or Artist button.

This function disappointed me. For this feature you’re supposed to just press a button and say a song title or name of an artist. If you like music in English ONLY, you should have no problems, it recognizes everything. The problems arise with other languages. Midomi has not recognized any of the Portuguese and French artists I have said.

As for those who speak Spanish, it fully recognizes “anglophone” names (Ricky Martin, Marc Anthony, Jennifer Lopez) and those with a strong foothold in the U.S. (Enrique Iglesias, Julio Iglesias, Alejandro Sanz); the rest, Argentine, Mexican, Spanish ... not recognized.

Intrigued as to why this behavior, found in the search section a notice that the search function recognizes only “top” artists and songs (see picture below).

• Text search.

As expected, this option works well. Not much to explain, typical operation of a search engine.

Results

When Midomi recognizes a song, the first thing displayed is a list with the results. Then we can select the song, and we will see a screen with several options and information: album cover, link (if available) to the iTunes Store to purchase the song, the ability to share the song with friends and various related videos . All very well implemented.

Conclusion ...

I forgot one thing, it is not necessary to be online to use Midomi, it also operates in offline mode. The procedure is the same, we push the orange button, Midomi records and saves a piece. A red circle icon with a number, indicates recognition of outstanding songs. As Midomi launched again and when we’re connected to the Internet, the application will finish the identification process.

I liked Midomi, a lot. I am one of those who listens to the radio when I’m in the car as a way to discover new music.  I select only stations that don’t have annoying DJs and many interruptions.  This has the drawback of not being told the name of the songs.  Midomi makes my life much easier. Now, when I hear a song I like, I launch Midomi. It recognizes the song, and a new song becomes part of my library. Piece of cake!

• Functions - 4.5
• Appearance - 5.0
• Usability - 5.0.
• Value - 4.0.
• Total : 4.625 out of 5.

Daniel Fernández

NOTE: Test software provided by Melodis Corporation