Here’s the scenario, you’re in one of your favorite stores, you know, the trendy store that always plays really hip music. You’re humming to the tunes as you’re shopping and hear a tune that you’re familiar with, but you just can’t recall the name of the group who sings it. Fear no more, Shazam is there to save you from wondering all day long, as you’re humming the tune, racking your brain out trying to figure out just who sings that tune. All you have to do is just pull out your iPhone, open up Shazam and let it do its magic.

Here is how Shazam works: when you hear a song that you want to know more about (either from the radio, TV, film, or in a store) just pop out your iPhone, open up Shazam, press the ‘Tag Now’ button, which is in the upper left corner, and hold it toward the location of the music. Keep holding it (for about 10 seconds) until you feel your iPhone vibrate, then, look at your iPhone and you will see the results.

You will be presented with the name of the song, name of artist/group, album name, genre, label and the date you tagged the song. But that isn’t it….you are then given the option to preview or purchase the song via iTunes, view any available videos in YouTube, Tweet your result, send a post card via email, view the Biography of the artist/group, and view the Discography of the artist/group. It gives you a few other options like taking a photo (I guess of the location) of where you are when you tag the song, attach a photo or just delete the song result.

What I really like about Shazam is the clean UI and its accuracy. However, it does have a difficult time identifying some underground or lesser-known artists. I have tried to hum a tune to see if it would work. It didn’t. I think only once or twice it wasn’t able to decipher a tune. But I’ve used it hundreds of times and more often than not, it usually found what I needed. Oh, I forgot to mention, the price of this app…..it’s FREE! Yay!

Technical Info: Shazam was released on July 7, 2008 with a few updates here and there. Made by Shazam Entertainment, Ltd. It is compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch and requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later. It is also available for use with Android and Blackberry phones. To view more information about Shazam, you can visit their website: http://www.shazam.com/music/web/home.html which contains a lot of other information. To download it from iTunes, click on the iTunes App Store button at the bottom or just type ‘Shazam’ from the App Store on your iPhone.

If anybody has used Shazam and wants to share their experiences with Shazam, leave a comment and share the wealth with our fellow readers!