Did you go to ACL Fest this weekend? My App-A-Day buddy, Colin did. Sounds like he had lots of fun, but the rain ruined the big fancy lawn they worked on all year. I hope the rain doesn’t change their mind about having it in October next year.

If you used the ACL Fest iPhone App we wrote about last week, let us know how that worked.

Sticking with the music theme for another post, we’re writing about Shazam today. Shazam lets you put your phone near the source of some music, tap ‘Tag It’ and Shazam, it figures out the song!

Recently a beautiful song was playing on Eklektikos, a radio show on KUT, our local public radio station. I hadn’t heard it before but it was haunting and I was intrigued. I only had a few minutes in the car and didn’t think i had time to wait until the end to find out what it was.

I’d already downloaded Shazam. Dara Quackenbush had recommended it months ago when i had complained on Twitter about an unknown tune relentlessly playing in my head. It was stuck there for days. Alas, the sad truth of my life at the time was that I didn’t have an iPhone. And, just so I don’t mislead you into thinking Shazam is something it’s not, Shazam can’t figure a song out from me humming the foolishness rattling around in my head. This is probably a positive limitation.

The stuck song turned out to be Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve. I had to wait awhile before I figured it out.

That song last week? The Ballad of The Runaway Horse sung by Jennifer Warnes. I only had to wait a few seconds to find it out this time cuz Shazam came through for me.

Shazam performed well again tonight identifying Gonna Make You Sweat and Do it Like A Truck. Both of these were playing in Cafe Disco on Season 5 of The Office, now available on NetFlix Instant Play.

I haven’t spent time digging around to discover any other features of Shazam, but if you’re using it, do tell anything else you know.

And if there’s any category of apps you’d like to see us review here, or you’ve found any new music using Shazam, we’d sure like to hear about that, too.

App: Shazam
Purpose: Song recognition
Cost: Free