Music & phones

Posted on April 20, 2006 by ruchit

Last year I read about some service which allowed mobiel phone users to know about the movie for songs clips, by just bringing in phone and sound source closure. Not sure if that was working on decoding sound frequencies and then matching against a huge database they had.

Here comes another technique known as Sound QR Code.

NTT DoCoMo has developed the acoustic OFDM (Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing) technology, which can embed URLs and text data in broadcast music/audio. Consumers’ mobile phones “listen” to the music/audio and extract the embedded URLs/data. About 100 characters can be transmitted in a second.

Woo!!

Can be a good way to get ringtones, you liked the song which is getting played, take your phone near to the source, you will get a binary SMS allowing you to download ringtone for the same.

Or may be a good way to get a map of hyderabad, when you say ‘Hyderabad’ in a particular mode :)

Imagination is the limit.

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  • Anonyrat

    One service that identifies music is Shazam (http://www.shazam.com). You just need to dial a number, hold your mobile phone to the music for 30 sec, and if it recognizes the song you get a text message identifying the song.

    Sound QR Code doesn’t sound so cool. It just seems to embed a data stream into the existing audio stream. There seems to be extra hardware required at the broadcast as well as the receiver side. Unnecessary extra hardware != Cool.

    However, the other idea you suggested – getting a message about the current song after taking the device close to the audio source – sounds cool and do able. Just add a Bluetooth module to the music player that broadcasts the song information.

    I think OFDM is the technology used by Wireless USB which, like Bluetooth, is for personal area or short range networking, although its supposed to have more bandwidth than Bluetooth. So, when Bluetooth suffices for small amounts of data, why go with Sound QR Code? On the other hand, the technology itself is cool, unlike the application in the article.

  • http://siliconverse.com ruchit

    SoundQR is cool for creating a better marketing scenarios.

    For services like Shazam, its user driven scenraio where user needs to dial one number and get info about the song.

    SoundQR based system, user’s device can be used as an advertisment channel without even actually dialing out(thanks to that EXTRA hardware which goes unnoticed to the end-user)

  • Anonyrat

    The point is to minimize (actually to make as easy as possible) the user interaction and interface – not to eliminate it completely. When a user does not initiate the exchange and receives the message, it becomes intrusive. Users don’t appreciate intrusion – how would you like it if every ad on TV and every billboard you pass on the road sent an SMS to your phone?

  • Anonyrat

    The point is to minimize (actually to make as easy as possible) the user interaction and interface – not to eliminate it completely. When a user does not initiate the exchange and receives the message, it becomes intrusive. Users don’t appreciate intrusion – how would you like it if every ad on TV and every billboard you pass on the road sent an SMS to your phone?

  • http://siliconverse.com ruchit

    -Its an intrusion for sure, but think we still allow advertisments on our TV because we dont want to pay for Advertisment free channels

    -Technology is cool, its just that we need to find perfect business model for the same

  • Anonyrat

    When we watch an advertisement on TV, it is in exchange for watching content on TV – content that we want to view. In the scenario you mentioned, what if I don’t want the content in the first place? I get the ad and the content. By the way, TV ads are not considered intrusive – they are expected by the user and are delivered to the user because the user leaves his TV on during ads.

    Intrusion apart – you mentioned this in your post: “take your phone near to the source”. Isn’t that user initiated? Would rather sit back and get the ringtone remotely or get up and go near the audio source? What if the speakers are in the ceiling or someplace unreachable?

    In what way is the technology cool? I do not think that it is doing anything new. You can already embed text into FM broadcasts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Data_System

    Honestly, the article you linked to in the first place is quite vague. I just found out what a QR code is (look up wikipedia).

    I know that you’re an intelligent guy. Tell me truthfully – do you really think we need new technology to do what you mentioned in the post?

    To conclude, I think QR codes are cool. They use existing hardware (camera phones) and are able to send extra (although static) data to the user after a user initiated action. On the other hand, I don’t think Sound QR codes are very cool. I cannot think of an application that can be done with the Sound QR code technology and not with some combination of existing technology. So, I go back on what I said in the first comment – the technology itself is not cool either.

    However much I think that the technology is not cool, it is good that companies try out new things – thats how innovation happens.

    Please note that I do not mean to offend or put down your commentary on technology in anyway. I’m just presenting my point of view. And making use of the comment system since it exists ;P.

    Delete the redundant comment (#4) (my mistake) if possible.