New technology names that song
Posted at 10:51 a.m. PST Friday, Dec. 14, 2001
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- Ever hear a song on the radio that catches your interest, but
miss its name?
By the end of next year, a new high-tech tool could solve your problem.
Royal Philips Electronics NV, the Dutch electronics giant, has developed it and says it will start
selling licenses for so-called ``Audio Fingerprinting.''
The technology allows you to retrieve, within seconds, not only a track's title but also the artist and
album. All that's required is to hold a mobile phone to a radio's speaker for three seconds -- long
enough to record a digital fingerprint -- when a song is playing.
The cell phone sends the fingerprint to a database that matches it with the identifying codes of
almost every song ever recorded and released.
Less than four seconds after dialing the service number, up pops a text message on your cell phone
with the song's ID.
Microsoft Corp. and other companies are developing similar technology.
Philips researchers are say background noise or poor sound quality should not prevent the server
from recognizing a song.
``The fingerprint might contain small mistakes. The technology is so robust that it can handle
that,'' said Jaap Haitsma, a Philips research scientist.
Philips Digital Networks, a subsidiary of the Amsterdam-based company, has patents on the
technology and on some of the possible applications.
The company, which did not specify prices, says it plans to sell a computer server with the music
fingerprints and a license for the software bearing the technology. Spokeswoman Ellen de Vries
said the company is in talks with several telecom companies, which she declined to identify.
In a later stage, Philips says it may also install the technology on its own electronic devices.
Employees of Philips Research Laboratories in the southern town of Eindhoven are testing the
technology, using a database of 300,000 songs. Earlier tests were conducted with a few tens of
thousands.
The technology comes down to a calculation process -- a very smart mathematical algorithm that
classifies songs based on a recording's notes, their pitch, speed, variety and dynamics, said
Haitsma.
``The three seconds of music can be anywhere in any song. If you don't have the right algorithm
there will not be enough computers on planet earth to handle this process,'' he said.
The technology, if proven, could have a variety of applications.
An Internet service provider could offer the service to customers who frequently download MP3s
to help them organize music collections stored on their hard drives.
Copyright protection agencies could also use the technology to identify and catalogue which songs
played on the radio.
As well, a legitimate online music services running on the Napster model could use the technology
to stop copyright-protected material from being shared.
AI
