One of the best iPhone applications I’ve tried so far is Shazam. This utility will listen for several seconds to a song that’s playing wherever you happen to be. Shazam uploads audio data to a server, waits for a response, and then tells you the name of the song, the album on which it’s found, the name of the group, etc. You also get a picture of the album cover. Further, a log is kept of all the songs you’ve analyzed so that you can decide later whether to buy the CDs. I tested the application with several songs in iTunes and with some background music in a movie or two. Shazam’s ability to detect which song is playing – even with distracting foreground/background noise – is amazing. The only flaws I’ve found so far involve its inability to identify jazz and classical music. Many songs from those genres appear not to be in the company’s database.

Check out Shazam in action. Then get it from the Apple app store. The application is currently free!