Music Recognition on the iPhone

So you’re at your favorite clothing store looking through the clearance section when you hear a song on the PA system. You really like the song and try your hardest to figure out what the name of the song or artist is, but it just won’t come to you. Before you’d have to have a phone with Verizon Wireless that was V Cast Song ID capable, but now iPhone owners are able to take advantage of this helpful service.

Erica Sadun, who has created many cool apps for the iPhone, has released a beta version of an app called Listen. You basically just open the app and hold your iPhone up to the music for 5 seconds and it then lists the song, artist and album. I’ve put this app on my iPhone and tested it out and it has not worked yet, but it’s still a beta so I guess theres some tweaking that needs to be done before it’s 100%.

This is still a nice idea for those times when you hear a song and want to purchase it with the iTunes Wifi Store app.

Update: I tested the app in my car and it worked 3 out of 3 times. It even worked when I put the music channel on my TV on 80′s Hits. Maybe the music on my computer at work is too “Indie” for this app to recognize my songs.