Ajax Blog

New startup Midomi, a voice-based music search engine with a social network bolted on, launched earlier today. If you have a microphone connected to your computer, just sing or hum a few seconds of any song. In theory, Midomi will return a link to the original song for partial playback or purchase, and will also return results from other users who’ve recorded themselves singing that song.

I’ve been testing this all morning. And I cannot come up with a single match. Not one. I think that my voice is to blame, though, as others testing it seem to have good results. In my last attempt I tried to sing part of Amazing Grace since it’s fairly slow and they use it in the demo video to explain how the site works. My top match came back as a user clip rapping part of a Notorious B.I.G. song. I swear I am not making this up.

The social network aspect to this is what will make it popular, and the search engine will help people group songs that they all sing and compare. Users have a profile page and can add friends, fans, etc. Others rate their recordings. kSolo (acquired by Fox) and SingShot have dabbled in this space successfully.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/82147629/