Lightning Review: Midomi

Today's Lightning Review comes from FoilTape, a review of Midomi, free on iTunes. Most people have been raving about Shazam for identifying music, but Midomi seems to work better with humming and the like. Let's see what FoilTape thinks!

Midomi calls itself "the ultimate search and discovery." It's a FREE, cool and engaging app that definitely has scored 'wow' points with me. Midomi is a song recognition program that you can sing to, hum to, talk to, or type to. You can even hold your iPhone up to your car stereo to capture the sound. Midomi then searches its database and tries to decipher your best karaoke attempt and gives back likely matches.

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I tried it a few times and rate its accuracy at around 70%. Chances are that you'll get your title back in the list of responses. For these screenshots, I help my iPhone up to laptop speakers playing the opening lines of 'John Deere Green' (guitar and drums only, no singing) and Midomi found the result right away (3rd img). From the result screen, you can buy the song on iTunes and search YouTube for related video (4th img).

A fun bonus...when you sing or hum your song, Midomi will let you hear other's singing and humming the same song! (5th img) That's sure to get a laugh. I cracked up when I heard some Asian 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da'.

If the program didn't crash my iPhone the first time I used it (it's been fine since then) I'd give it 5 stars.

Pros

  • WOW factor
  • Intuitive and simple
  • FREE

Cons

  • Crashed my phone on 1st use
  • Accuracy only about 70%

Rating: 4/5

Dieter Bohn