Shazam remains one of my favorite mobile apps. I use it regularly on my iPhone and think it's probably the one app that I'd use if I wanted impress my 10-year-old self about the future (after, of course, laying the needed groundwork by explaining what a smartphone is.)
Shazam is out today with an app for OS X, which brings the magic of song recognition to your Mac. After installing the app and jumping through one setup screen that asks if you'd like to launch Shazam at startup, a small icon gets placed in your menu bar.
Unlike the mobile app, the Mac app does not require you to tap or click a button to tag a song; it's listening all of the time. Actually, it listens for 4-hour stretches; a counter marks the time remaining in the app's drop-down panel accessible from the menu bar. Next to the counter is a switch to turn the app on and off.
When a song or TV show or ad is playing on your Mac or nearby, Shazam uses your Mac's microphone to listen to what's playing. When it finds a match, it notifies you and adds the track or show or ad to the drop-down panel.
From this panel of your recent identifications, you can click on an item to open a Shazam.com page in your default browser with information that can include videos, lyrics, album information, and various purchase options. For most tracks listed in the drop-down panel, you can also click an iTunes button to purchase the track.
In my admittedly brief testing, Shazam identified every song I threw at it except for a live version of Townes Van Zandt's "Pancho and Lefty" and a young R.L. Burnside singing "See My Jumper Hanging on the Line."
In order to work, Shazam needs your microphone enabled and set to an input volume high enough to hear what's around you. The Shazam support site states, "Any input volume halfway or above should suffice." Head to System Preferences > Sound and click on the Input tab to adjust your microphone's input volume level.
(Via The Next Web)