Music producers are finally fighting piracy the right way – through convenience.
The new free iPhone [1] app, Shazam [2], recognizes songs and tells you where you can buy it from. It also provides information about the artists and the album, directs users to reviews, and gives you song lyrics.
The advantage with this is that it allows users to pick the song off television, radio, or movies, puts them directly in touch with valuable services, and seeks to commercialize off of it.
If these services prove to be more convenient than users having to search the web for all of this information independently they may choose the pay option for obtaining the song, if the cost of purchase is reasonably low enough.
You can see the Shazam advertisement here [3].
A fringe benefit is that you could probably hum the lyrics David Bilinsky [4]is always citing on Slaw and finally figure out what song it is.