Shazam Music Search Alternative For Linux
Photo by OpenClipartVectors (Pixabay)
Growing up in a time of vinyl records and 8-track cassettes, it’s safe to say that I have an appreciation for music. Flash forward to today and we’re now able to enjoy any song we want, on demand! With music services provided by Amazon and independent sources, legally downloading music has never been so easy.
These days, most of my music is set up on my Android smart phone. And should a song that I don’t recognize end up being blasted on my car’s radio, I can rely on the Shazam app to help me determine the song’s name and artist.
But what about when you’re sitting in front of your Linux box, hammering away in your terminal? The boss is nearby and opening up a browser window to search for a possible song match isn’t practical. What then? I recommend installing and running an app called instantmusic.
True to its name, instantmusic provides you with the ability to determine the name of a song/artist simply by providing some clues about the song. Installing instantmusic is simple enough. Just install it from your distro’s repository. Distros such as Arch (AUR) and Ubuntu will have immediate access for easy installation.
Correction: I installed this sometime ago, I forgot I used pip to install it. Install pip from your local repository, then use these commands to install the app. You’ll need to run python -version to determine which version of Python you’re using.
Python 2.7
sudo pip install instantmusic
or
Python 3.4
sudo pip3 install instantmusic
Okay, now that you have it installed I want to share the two basic functions this software provides.
1) It’ll help you to determine the name of a song and the band that sings it.
2) It allows you to download the music from YouTube. Now, due to copyright laws in most countries, I’d recommend sticking to legal to download music for this last part. Creative Commons and public domain songs both are fine.
Open up a terminal window and type the following:
instantmusic
You’ll then be presented with something like this:
Enter songname/ lyrics/ artist.. or whatever
>
For demonstration purposes, type the following.
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
These are the lyrics to a song you’ve heard somewhere, but you don’t know who sings it or the name of the song. Okay, hit enter.
Making a Query Request!
Found: Bob Marley - Redemption Song<
Download song (y/n)?
Because there is a copyright for this song in place, I’d simply choose n and then buy the song from Amazon or another music store online.
Let’s try another:
instantmusic
ironman ac dc
Making a Query Request!
Found: Iron Man: AC\DC - Thunderstruck (Music Video)
Download song (y/n)?
In this case, I know who the band is. But I may have forgotten the name of the song, only remembering hearing the song in the Iron Man movie.
Now sometimes you may run into an instance where the song has been played by multiple musicians. For example:
instantmusic
Enter songname/ lyrics/ artist.. or whatever >
mamma told me when I was young
Making a Query Request!
Found: shinedown simple man lyrics
Download song (y/n)?
In this case, that isn’t the original version of the song. Since I was looking for the original, I’ll try this instead.
instantmusic
Enter songname/ lyrics/ artist.. or whatever >
mamma told me when I was young original
Making a Query Request!
Found: Simple Man - Lynyrd Skynyrd - Lyrics HD
Download song (y/n)?
This time I have the original song, played by the correct band. This is useful when you want the original version of a song but don’t know who sings it.
Now let’s download a song (a legal one - copy left):
instantmusic
Enter songname/ lyrics/ artist.. or whatever >
Making Me Nervous
Making a Query Request!
Found: Brad Sucks - Making Me Nervous (I Don't Know What I'm Doing) [Lyrics]
Download song (y/n)? y
Downloading...
So basically what happened is instantmusic went out to YouTube, grabbed a copy of the song, then converted it to mp3 for your listening enjoyment.
And that’s it! Go ahead and give it a whirl. I’ve used this app countless times when a song gets in my head and for the life of me, I can’t remember who sings it.
Matt has written about various software titles, such as Moodle, Joomla, WordPress, openCRX, Alfresco, Liferay and more. He also has additional Linux experience working with Debian based distributions, openSUSE, CentOS, and Arch Linux.
