TOKYO-MTV Japan and Yamaha said they made available Japan’s first music recognition service, MTV Music Finder, to KDDI Corp. subscribers across Japan.
In partnership with Shazam Entertainment, a U.K.-based audio recognition company, MTV Japan will work with its local licensee, SystemK Corp., to deliver Shazam’s mobile music recognition service to KDDI customers.
First launched to Vodafone subscribers in July last year, the service will give KDDI customers the chance to trial the MTV Music Finder service free on KDDI’s EZ Web data service.
After registering, subscribers then can identify tracks by dialing 9963 and holding their mobile phones toward the music source. Once dialed, the service searches through a catalog of music and returns e-mails within seconds to handsets, giving details of titles and artists. Users can then purchase chosen ringtones from MTV Sounds.
Through deals with Vodafone and KDDI, nearly 40 million subscribers will now have access to Shazam’s database built on fingerprint technology and consisting of 2.5 million tracks, the company said.
