StartupCafe

With Anthony Ashbrook and Geoff Ballinger busy at Mobile World Congress, we’re delighted to hear the official announcement of Mobile Acuity‘s partnership with 7digital this week.

As experts in mobile visual search, Mobile Acuity’s prior work includes mobile advertising campaigns for Vodafone, such as You Rockstar. Now they’re moving further into the music scene with 7digital, a digital media delivery company based in London.

While Shazam offers song info based on audible recognition, Mobile Acuity’s technology uses visual recognition to retrieve song and album details for users. By taking a photo of a CD cover, billboard, or even a magazine ad, people can use the “Visual Discovery Service” to pull up song and artist information instantly before previewing, purchasing, and downloading music to their mobile device.

So imagine you see an ad for NOW! 98 while you’re waiting for the bus, and you’re curious to hear what songs made the cut. Or you’re looking through a random music collection at a party, and you want to get the scoop on an old Foo Fighters CD you come across – maybe even download a song or two. Or perhaps you’re browsing Tesco, and you want to hear the lesser known songs on a Rihanna CD you’re contemplating. Simply take a photo of the billboard or CD cover using your phone, and the app will recognise the image and pull up all the corresponding info. Now you can sample the songs and download what you like right then and there. Mobile Acuity handles the image recognition, and the database/delivery of music is where 7digital comes in. Sounds like a cool match!

With so many applications for this sort of data look-up based on a quick mobile photo, we’re excited to see what partnerships emerge for Mobile Acuity in the future. But for now, we’re delighted to hear the news and hope celebrations are in order when Anthony & Geoff get back! Have fun at MWC in Barcelona guys, and congrats on the great news :).

See it in action – Demo here!