How many times have you heard a song plenty of times, but never knew its name or who sang it? A new service known as Songlink'd hopes to "Name That Tune" for you. The service is easy to use. If you hear a song somewhere, and want it identified, call Songlink'd and hold your phone up so the service can record at least 15 seconds of the song. Songlink'd will then use digital fingerprinting technology to ID the song and send you back a text message with the name and artist. Of course, you also get a link to purchase the song itself, the full CD or even a ringtone version of the track.
"The idea of being able to identify songs on your mobile phone has been around for a few years," Songlink'd CEO Sunjay Guleria told MTV.com, "but with text messaging becoming more standard and the emergence of the iPod culture and the popularity of ringtones, now's the time. We're the first company to put it all together so that when a friend tells you about it, it doesn't matter what carrier you use, you can use our product."
Songlink'd fully launches next week, but a beta version of the service is currently up and running. It costs 99 cents per usage, but if it cannot find your song in its database of 2.5 million tunes, you are not charged. The system also cannot recognize live versions of songs, just the actual recording.