Phone up to identify song and singer

Technology has come to the rescue of record shop staff bombarded by customers hollering random lines of songs over the counter in a bid to identify the artist.

A new cellphone service offering technology to identify songs has been launched by Telecom and will be introduced by Vodafone this year.

Users call a number while the song is playing, and hold their cellphone near the speakers of the stereo, television, or computer. Telecom's Song ID service runs the 30 seconds of music through an extensive database of songs until it finds a match, and then texts the user back with the name of the song and the artist.

Each call costs 99c, but if no match is found there is no charge.

Song ID could put an end to "radio rage" - the frustration of hearing a song and waiting for the presenter to announce the artist, only to be thwarted by ads.

Real Groovy staff member Kerry Buchanan said it could mean the end of a fine tradition - staff members picking the song from snatches sung to them by customers.

"It's a pity. It could take away all the old-school charm of people coming in and singing.

"People don't do that as much as they used to, but it's always good fun and quite amusing.

"It can be tricky unless it's a well-established song, but it's a bit of detective work for us."

However, Mr Buchanan may still have some years of sleuthing ahead of him: in a trial run by the Herald, Song ID picked The Animals' House of the Rising Sun and Avril Lavigne's I'm With You, but no match was found for two more obscure songs on bFM radio station.

Telecom's mobile marketing director, Kevin Bowler, said the database had more than 2.6 million tracks, was updated daily and had most genres, apart from live and classical music.

It was designed for New Zealand and included extensive lists of New Zealand music.

Similar technology - called Shazam - has been used in Britain for several years, and AT&T Wireless introduced Shazam to the United States last year.