What's the best way to identify these songs?
December 5, 2010 8:11 PM   Subscribe

I've got 10 or so electronica mp3's I imported into iTunes off an unlabeled CD. What's the best way to identify the song title and artist?

1) No lyrics to speak of to Google search. Plus they might be remixes/alternate versions.
2) For whatever reason iTunes isn't able to get the answer from the CDDB database.
3) I don't have a microphone on my desktop or a smartphone w/ Shazaam or Midori.

I'd rather not upload the mp3's to mediafire and link to them here. Is there a way I could play them in iTunes, but trick Midori into thinking my audio out is the microphone? Finally, would it be possible to make a video with an audio track of one of these sounds, then upload it to Youtube and let its copyright protection tell me? Any ideas are appreciated. By me.
posted by boghead to Computers & Internet (10 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Try Picard.
posted by fings at 8:19 PM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]


Why not just link them here? If you don't label them, there's no real way they'll be used for piracy. I don't see how it would be any worse than uploading it to youtube.
posted by empath at 8:25 PM on December 5, 2010


Do you have an audio cable you could use to connect your headphone-out jack to your microphone-in jack? Then you could use Shazam or some other such service.

p.s. iTunes' CDDB lookup doesn't work for mix CDs unless the person who made the mix uploaded the track information themselves (it checks for an album match, not individual songs), so that's why you didn't have any luck in regards to #2.
posted by bcwinters at 8:31 PM on December 5, 2010


If it's from a mix cd, chances are, you won't have much luck with Shazam, either. The songs on mix cds are played at a different speed and pitch than they were recorded at and will usually not be recognized.
posted by empath at 8:34 PM on December 5, 2010


Shazam.
posted by devnull at 11:12 PM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]


Seconding Shazam!
posted by Master Gunner at 4:28 AM on December 6, 2010


If you can't figure it out, feel free to memail me the songs and I'll take a shot at id-ing them. If I can't, I can at least point you in the direction of similar songs/artists.
posted by empath at 6:03 AM on December 6, 2010


Best answer: Seconding musicbrainz/Picard.
posted by doctord at 8:55 AM on December 6, 2010


- If you have a mobile phone that supports it, try Shazam, it's easiest. (On preview, OP says they don't have it, so on to alternatives!)
- Otherwise rip the songs and feed them to Picard/Musicbrainz.
- If the files were properly tagged when burned, there might be CD-TEXT info on the disc. I'm not sure if iTunes reads/writes CD-TEXT data, though.
- Using YouTube's copyright identification is probably a bad idea (it's basically the same thing as Musicbrainz anyways).
posted by neckro23 at 10:10 AM on December 6, 2010


Response by poster: I'll try Picard or Musicbrainz. If not, I'll come back with Mediafire. May have to wait till this weekend. Thank you MeFi.
posted by boghead at 4:55 PM on December 6, 2010


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