Music Records Matching 1.0

Music Records Matching demonstrates the music identification technology and given a short audioclip it will find the full record Music Records Matching demonstrates the music identification technology and given a short audio clip it will find the full record.
The application demonstrates use of two technologies developed by Sloud Inc.: Audio (Acoustic) Fingerprinting and Audio Identification.
Sloud MRM Acoustic Fingerprint (audio fingerprint) is a compact representation or index of an audio record. The audioprint can be used to find particular record in a large music database.
This audioprint knows nothing of the title of the record, or performer, or any other type of textual description of the music. Its based exclusively on the sound data itself.
Sloud MRM Audio Fingerprinting is constructed in two stages:
- Conversion of audiodata to some standard format (PCM);
- Indexing of the PCM data from the beginning to the end.
The current demo works with MP3 files because they seem to be the most commonly used. But any other type of music files can be used just as well and support for other formats is planned.
Sloud MRM Audio Identification is the technology which identifies the records by their Sloud MRM Acoustic Fingerprints. This component records a short 15-second fragment of the record, creates its audioprint, then searches its database for similar audioprints.
Both technologies are targeted at weakly distorted records. Such alterations appear, for instance, when the record is digitized, when its converted from one audio format to another, or during compression/decompression.
The modifications introduce artifacts that can be heard as a slight hissing or alterations in high or low pitch sounds of the music.
In order to demonstrate technology clearly, the Sloud MRM Audio Identification records sound played by the users media player (as opposed to directly searching for file fragments).
Potential Applications
The Acoustic Fingerprinting technology could be useful whenever someone needs to match an unknown record against a database of records, or discover identical records in a large set.
For example, a copyright holder may want to use MRM to in order to control distribution of music online, or in P2P file-swapping networks.
Music Records Matching can be used to meter use of copyrighted music or advertising in broadcasts, such as radio. MRM can also be used by search engine operators to identify music files found on the web. Or it can be used to identify video clips by the background sounds.
We are currently building a desktop application that will allow music fans to find and remove duplicates in their music collections. The application will seek multiple copies of the same records based on their content (as opposed to metadata).
System requirements:
- Pentium PII 400 MHz processor (or higher)
- RAM 128 MB
- 10 MB free disk space
- Sound card
- Modem (or another Internet connection) with 56 kbps (or higher)