What is AudioTag and what it does?

AudioTag.info — is a free music recognition service. It allows you to identify almost any unknown piece of music quickly and easily. Using it is very simple: upload a short audio fragment or a whole song (even a 10 seconds fragment is enough), let the robot analyze it and get information about the track title, artist name, album title, etc. Your audio fragment can be in almost any file format and of almost any quality ( aurally recognizable, of course): it can be an MP3 file you downloaded from the Internet, or a short recording you made with your old tape recorder and digitized into a low quality audio file. AudioTag can also recognize audio files directly from Youtube and other video sharing services.

Is it free?

Yes, the service is absolutely free for non-commercial use.

How does it work?

This service is based on a sophisticated audio recognition engine that combines proprietary, patented audio fingerprinting technology and a database of millions of songs. After you upload an audio file, it is analyzed by the underlying audio engine. During recognition, an audio fingerprint is extracted from the acoustic content of the uploaded audio file and then identified by the engine using a special fingerprint matching algorithm and a large database of music fingerprints. At the end of the process, information about all matched song candidates is displayed.

What are the supported file formats?

You can upload files in almost any file format. Uncompressed, ADPCM and other waves (.WAV), MPEG-1 Layer III (.MP3), Ogg Vorbis (.OGG), FLAC, Flash Video (.FLV), .AMR, .MP4, and many more file formats are supported. AudioTag can recognize audio tracks in video files too.

Is the recognition reliable?

Yes, the recognition is reliable. Erroneous results are possible, but the probability of such event is low.

What is an optimal duration of an uploaded audio fragments?

The optimal duration for uploaded audio files is 10-30 seconds. Shorter and longer audio files can also be recognized. You can also upload very long recordings, but the robot will use a shorter fragment for recognition, so as not to overload the server and to allow others to use it.

I've uploaded a short music fragment and it could not be identified, but the recognition worked once I’ve uploaded the entire song. Why?

If you upload a recording that contains a fragment of an unknown song, please make sure it is representative enough, i.e. contains enough audible information, to recognize it. It may happen that the fragment you select is not informative enough. In that case, uploading a longer recording may increase the chances of successful recognition.

Can the service recognize multiple songs in a single recording?

Yes, the engine can recognize different songs contained in different fragments of the same audio recording. The recognition results contain information about the songs in question with the corresponding time intervals with respect to the beginning of the analyzed recording.

Can the robot recognize melodically similar tracks??

The underlying core audio fingerprinting technology works with purely acoustic features of the sound and does not consider melodic or musical properties. Therefore, it is not able to detect melodic similarities and can only find tracks with exactly the same sound. On the other hand, the algorithm is robust to sound distortion, noise, and even speed variations, and therefore recognizes songs in poor quality audio recordings.

How many tracks in the data base?

The song database contains more than dozens millions titles.

What kind of music is contained in the database?

The database contains mainly popular music (1940s to present), rock, blues, electronic, jazz and classics.

Can I contribute to AudioTag?

Yes, you can.

What are the advantages of this service compared to other similar services?

AudioTag can recognize audio even by a very short audio fragment, it is available online and is free, it can report multiple songs contained in the same recording with time-stamps, and it can recognize audio directly in YouTube videos.

Does AudioTag have API?

Yes, it does. API is available to all its users and is free. Certain limitations apply to the free API usage.

Can AudioTag be used commercially?

AudioTag can be used commercially via its API.