Tag: Shazam

Article – French language / Langue Française

Freebox Révolution : InfoMusic et DNLA dans une mise à jour | Numerama.fr

From the horse’s mouth

Free.fr

Press Release (French language / Langue Française – PDF)

My Comments

Freebox Révolution now with Shazam-style abilities

Often when you are watching TV, you may hear that piece of music that was used in that movie or TV show even though it may not be visibly identified.

Normally you could use Shazam or SoundHound on your smartphone or tablet (iOS, Android, Windows 8) to identify the songs but you have to “cock” your device to your TV’s speaker and have Shazam running before you know when that song is to play. Here, it can be difficult if you are watching broadcast TV content in real time rather than from a user-controlled recording like a PVR, optical disc or streamed on-demand service.

In France, the country where the set-top box is not the ordinary set-top box and the pay-TV and Internet service is delivered highly competitively, Free.fr have integrated this function as part of a software upgrade for their Freebox Révolution set-top box. Here, the software version number is 1.2.11 to gain this functionality.

This software, like Sony’s TrackID Android app is powered by GraceNote music-recognition technology and works from any of the video sources passing through the Freebox Révolution Player set-top box. This includes content available on the home network.

For that matter, Free has even improved the DLNA abilities for this software by having the Freebox Révolution Player be a DLNA MediaRenderer. This means that, like with the Sony BDP-S390 Blu-Ray player, you can “push” image, audio and video content to this device using software like TwonkyBeam, Gizmoot or BubbleUPnP to appear on your TV.

This is another example of what the competitive telecommunications and Internet market in France is bringing about in a healthy manner.

A cafe who can benefit from DLNA network AV technology

Spotify, Shazam and similar programs are music programs that can come in handy with people who have a café or bar as a favourite watering hole. This is whether through creating a playlist that relates to this location or identifying songs that are playing on the music system there.

As a café or bar owner

A café or bar can make Spotify work with their Website even if they can’t legally play content from this service through their music system. The manager could create a Spoitify account which is a so-called “public account” and use this just for sharing the playlists. Here, they identify tracks that are in the current playlist or on the music system and create a Spotify playlist based on these tracks.

Shazam song-identification for Android

This is then inserted in to their Website using the code that Spotify supply for inserting playable playlists in to a Website. Customers who visit the Website can have these songs playing through their computer which should be connected to a hi-fi or a pair of good speakers. They can even “subscribe” to these playlists to have them play through their Spotify-Connect-enabled equipment or their mobile devices.

As a “regular” customer

Customers can put Shazam, MusicID or similar music-recognition apps in to service to identify tracks that they like playing through the venue’s music system. This is more important with venues that have music systems that don’t readily show details about what’s currently playing but can be a problem in crowded venues where there is a lot of noise contesting the music.

These apps keep a record of what you have identified using them and have a link to various apps and services. For example, one could share the track names through Facebook or other social networks or play the tracks on Spotify or buy them through iTunes or other affiliated “download-to-own” online music stores.

Spotify, one of the most popular online music-streaming services

What I even do is create a “favourite places” playlist on Spotify which is comprised of songs that I have identified at my favourite cafes and bars. Here, I can then play this playlist on Spotify or use this as a reference for purchasing music or syncing it to my phone.

iOS users simply buy the songs from iTunes Music Store and download them to their to their iPhone or iPad “as they go”. Then they sync them to a Macintosh or Windows computer using the iTunes desktop software. Android users use a music store that supplies music as MP3s on a download-to-own basis like Amazon or Big Pond Music. If you aren’t comfortable with downloading the music to your device, you can use the store’s “wishlist” function to create a memo list of the music you have liked when you trawl around Amazon to buy CDs online or visit your favourite music store.

Once you have bought your music, you could then work on a playlist or compilation CD/MiniDisc/cassette that focuses on these songs in a similar vein to what can be done with a subscription music service like Spotify.

Conclusion

Once you use Shazam, Spotify and similar software on your mobile computing environment, you can be able to get more out of your favourite watering holes.