HEY, WHAT IS THAT SONG ?

I am sure that more than once you have been passing the street hearing such or such song and wondering to yourself “what is that song?” So what to do in that case? call the radio station ask them? ask the car driver near you what he is listening? Ring at the door bell of your neighbour (hoping she is nice and pretty) to ask her the title of the song?

No you don t have to, consult shazam services: take your mobile phone close to the music source, wait 30 sec, and receive an SMS with the title of the song and album with of course the possibility to buy the CD and the ringtone. the service is not avail everywhere. i know in France Mobiquid was offering this service a few years ago in partnership with radio stations.

Breakthrough? Well at least another way to sell smartly ringtones and music. But what about the marketing of such an idea. How people will know the service exists at all.

• Partner with mobile operators? yes but they are already crouded with tones of services.
• Invest in marketing? Yeah but very expensive, get ready for fund raising. 
• Revenue Share distribution deal? yeah with e commerce web site, tv channels but again who will pay for the promotion for how long?
• Buying key words in Google? yeah but which one? what budget? how expensive
• Another great amazing idea? well just ask me. I have a couple that i believe are quite simple and not so expensive…. Which one of the ideas above will make shazam or mobiquid become a reflex and not a one shot trial service.

But my first advice to shazam would be to change their website. their idea and techno is great. But their site is ugly and in total contrast with their positionning.

Comments

[Uri L.]

Let's see if our minds might have crossed on the same ideas :)

How about using bluetooth to send the song details? this way, the media player software sends the ID3 tag through bluetooth, and the interested consumer can see the details on his phone, after clicking the "request info" link.

A possible scenario - bars, cafes and clubs buy the complete kit: bluetooth dongle, sync software and a free media player. Plug the dongle, run the sync proggie, load your playlist, and run.

No extra pay for SMS, and a definite added value for the bar, cafe, club.

However - Nokia's Visual Radio (http://www.visualradio.com) is poised to take a major role in tying audio content with visual data and related services. Started in Europe and now has entered the US as well.
In fact, it's Nokia's aggressive answer the the DMB chip - the digital radio and media chips that offer digital broadcast of audio/video and data. Chips are already available in several handsets (mainly Samsung).

DMB Vs. Nokia Visual Radio is going to be an interesting battle for sure.

[ouriel]

Your idea goes in the same direction and take it further even. It would be particularly relevant for social environment. The advantage of my initial suggestion is that is does not need any infrastructure.

I also tried the demo of visualradio: this technology looks/sounds amazing. Of course they still need to develop better radio coverage which is limited and handsets to operate this feature are not the most widely spread. But it could change the way we listen the radio.