NQ Mobile 'Music Radar' App Revolutionizes Music Search in China

If you are an audiophile like me, getting access to the music you wish to hear on your mobile device can be a challenge. In case you missed it, our struggles could be ending soon once a new app from NQ Mobile that has recently been released in China by NQ’s subsidiary Yinlong, gets global circulation. 

The name of the app is “Music Radar.” It is certainly one to keep an eye open for. It is a content-based music information retrieval (MIR) application that is now available in China for both Android and iOS platforms. The good news is it is scheduled for more extensive release soon. 

As the headline states, NQ believes this will revolutionize music search. It appears to have a well-taken point. Aimed squarely at the evolving mobile and wearables markets, Music Radar does in fact offer “new forms of user interaction and the next generation of audio search technology.”

How so?

Features include:

• An innovative melody recognition engine; it can even find if sung or hummed
• Extremely fast music recognition
• Personalized music recommendations
• On-the-go music listening and downloading capabilities
• Social sharing through Simple Notification Service (SNS)

"We are pleased to bring a leading technology in the evolving category of mobile devices,” said Dr. Henry Lin, co-CEO of NQ Mobile. “In addition to searching for music through traditional means like recorded audio clips and files, users can now also accurately search for music by singing or humming.  As mobility trends continue to change the way in which we interact with devices and information, NQ Mobile will be at the forefront of technology innovation. We will also adopt this leading audio recognition technology for not only music search, but also to other areas related to radio, video and TV content applications.  Many new mobile devices, including ‘wearables,’ require new modes of user interaction and NQ’s technology is leading the way to enhance the applications and solutions around this market.”

If you are like me, you hear something on the radio and can’t remember the name of that tune or the artist. Music Radar as note above is going to allow us to hum the melody and identify precisely what we are looking for. Plus, the last two bulleted items about on-the-go listening and downloading and the ability to share something that knocks our socks off is a great touch.

NQ also is spot on in looking toward the extensibility of the technology being employed to other types of entertainment modalities as well as other form factors. As someone who has followed the voice recognition industry almost since its inception, while it has taken some time, the increased use of both speaker independent and speaker dependent voice makes sense.

Indeed, as we enter what I have called the “Age of Awareness,” the ability to use voice recognition is only going to become more valuable, especially as the “wearables” category —which includes such things as Google Glass and all of those smart watches about to hit the market—start rapidly moving up the user adoption curves. I just hope that my singing voice, which my family says is akin to murdering silence, is recognizable. I can’t wait to get my voice on this app.