Shazam is a free app for your device, which identifies music just by “hearing” it. Other programs on computers and phones have been out before, but it is nothing like Shazam. The software can help you find all about a song by finding who sings it, and what its title is. All you have to do is fire up Shazam and then hold up the iPhone close to a sound source where the song is playing through. Then, wait a few seconds for the program to communicate to Shazam’s servers and it will tell you all you want to know about the song.

To make the tool even more useful, the results page includes shortcuts to the iTunes WiFi Music Store, allowing you to buy the song directly from your phone, and to related content at YouTube. It also allows you to turn on auto-shazam, which tells your phone to constantly scan for nearby songs, even if the app is not open. This is particularly useful if you’re driving and a song comes on, but you’re unable to reach to get your phone. Shazam does an excellent job of keeping track of your recent song searches as well. There is also a charts tab that you can tap, which will show you the latest trending Shazams.

When Shazam works, it will definitely impress you with how fast and accurate it can be. In my small test session of about 25 songs, it correctly identified them 80% of the time. Shazam failed to identify songs 20% of the time and identified them incorrectly 10% of the time. The reason the software is so successful, seems to be the size of the label the artists are on and how well-established the musicians are. For more well-known groups or record labels, the software is nearly perfect. However, for some newer or less known artists, its rate of success was less consistent, though some smaller groups are still able to be identified. Really the only complaint I have with the app is that it needs to become better at identifying less well-known artists and songs. After all, it should be great at identifying all kinds of music, not just well-known songs. Generally speaking, the software seems most useful for songs that aren’t very widely known, like ones that have grown in popularity or have been around for a long time. Shazam is overall an extremely awesome and very useful program that does its work fairly well, and is definitely a must have if you’re into music.