MusicMarker Ltd. is releasing a service for the automated identification of music tracks. The first digital media players that directly support MusicMarker will be available soon.
A special MusicMarker button on portable devices lets people know what's playing around them. The company wants to help solving that common problem: a tune comes on the radio, starts playing in a cafe, or is the hot new theme song of a TV show, and as the song plays, nobody knows who the artist is or what the song is called.
When an unknown song is playing within earshot, pressing the MusicMarker button captures a ten second audio sample of the song. Upon syncing the portable device to a computer, these audio recordings are sent to the MusicMarker online service for identification. Each time an audio sample is uploaded to the service, the artist and title are immediately displayed.
Portable device buyers can expect portable devices with the built-in MusicMarker button to hit the market in Q2 of 2006. The first device will be the Venzero ONE portable media player from Venzero, Inc. The Venzero ONE is a Portable Media Player equipped for music playback, color photo display, FM radio, audiobooks, podcasting, storage and more.
In addition to music identification, MusicMarker Ltd. plans to return direct web links to stream, download, and purchase identified songs.
The company is based in the UK, with development in Sao Paulo, Brazil and offices in the USA and Germany.
