Telecom Song ID

This has evidently been available for a little while now, but I have been a bit behind on my Bloglines feeds... but better late than never, right?

Via Geekzone: Telecom New Zealand launches song identification via mobile phone

"Telecom New Zealand users have now a new service that helps identifying songs through a mobile phone. User can call *7664 (SONG) from any Telecom mobile phone and hold it in the direction of the music for 30 seconds. The Song Id service will automatically end the call, then send the SMS with the name of the track and the artist."

When I saw this, I thought, 'that sounds awfully familiar! In fact, isn't it exactly the same as Shazam in the UK?' I don't mean that in a bad way though, it's always good to see new mobile applications in New Zealand. Well, as long as they're useful. Song ID is perfect for targeting the youth market, whereas push-to-talk is completely... er... superfluous to that segment.

I hope that Telecom will take some cues from Shazam, and go one step further to let people keep track of all the songs they've tagged online, and then buy the CDs of the ones they like. Of course, the even more logical extension is linking it to the Motorola iTunes phone. Or, if you use a subscription service, automatically fetching that song to your playlist. I mean, all of this is so obvious that I don't think I even need to say it, really!

You know what would be really innovative? Is if they could somehow connect the Song ID service to your brain, so that when you get a song annoyingly stuck in your head and you don't know what it is, they will be able to ID it for you... Maybe in 20 or 30 years? =P