Tiamatini

If you ever, like me, hear a song and just can’t place it, then this may well be the perfect app for you.   It’s easy to use and will stop you going over and over that song you heard in that shop you went into but just couldn’t quite remember the name of…  Read on to see why, in brief, Shazam is a must-have for any iPhone user… I found this app through a friend who is just as bad at remembering the names of songs as I am.  It’s so incredibly easy to use that I’ll struggle to even fill 5 minutes for this review, but it’s so useful that it has to be shared!

Shazam is, as I have suggested, an app that identifies music that is playing using the mic on your phone.  You simply open up the application, hit the screen (there’s a handy “Touch to Shazam” instruction on the screen in case you’re not sure), let the app listen to about 30 seconds of the song and then, if it’s in the Shazam library, it’ll tell you what the song is and even give you the opportunity to link through and buy the song on iTunes if you’d like.  It’s very handy, and even identifies songs playing in the background of TV shows (yes, I have tested this).  It also saves the list of the songs you’ve tagged (or shazammed) so that you can look up the artists/albums at a later date, or go back and buy later if you don’t necessarily want to purchase the song right away.  You can use it in a shop or elsewhere in public – you don’t need to wave it around in the air, or point it towards the speakers or anything else that’ll make you feel (and look) daft, just hold your phone casually in your hand and let Shazam do its thing.

It’s perhaps not for everyone, some people just have those sorts of minds that will remember every song they’ve ever heard so they’ll have no need for this, but for the rest of us it’s on the very handy side of handy.  The only downside is that it’s sometimes a little slow opening up, and if you’re near the end of the song, or it’s only a snippet on tv, you might well miss your chance to tag enough of the song for Shazam to recognise it, but as flaws go, that one’s pretty unavoidable and doesn’t detract enough from the app to stop me loving it!  Best of all – it’s free!