Problems Plague Shazam App

Silicone Valley- Devoted iPhone/Android fans -who have been using a very useful third party application known as Shazam to identify songs unknown to them by holding their devices near to the source and collecting a few moments sample- were deeply disappointed today when it became widely known that for the third time in as many months a flaw impeding the performance of their beloved app has been identified.  So far this latest failure in the music recognition system has frustrated millions of users world wide and left them unable to to discover the artists responsible for songs appearing in their favorite Gap commercials or at the end of very special episodes of Gilmore Girls.  Hard numbers for the damages are unknown at this point but sources close to The Vitamin Press feel comfortable in reporting that Apple has estimated lost revenues to itunes, through their inability to capitalize on the full potential of the impulse purchases encouraged through the use of Shazam, are easily in the billions of dollars.

The initial problem with the system was brought to the fore of public consciousness by world famous activist, and spokesmen for the environmental action group People Establishing Nature In Society, Sage Pinebrush.  As Pinebrush remarked in a prepared statement to the press at the time of the first crisis.  “I bought this Shazam app for my mobile device and decided to test it out just because I’d hate to be in one of those life or death situations when you needed to know the name of a song that you did not know and all of a sudden discover that this thing didn’t work.  So, as I was going through this big Coldplay period at the time, I put on a copy of Viva la Velveeta on the hi-fi, skipped to track number seven and held my phone next to the speaker for about three seconds or so.  I brought back the phone and took a look at the screen.  To my surprise the phone told me that the song I knew to be by Coldplay was something called If I Could Fly by some guy named Joe Satorioni.  I repeated the procedure several times and after each one provided the same result I was very sure that something was wrong with the app.”

U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, the company responsible for developing and distributing the application, were quick to release a press release lamenting the failure of their product and promising a repair to the problem would be available in very short order.  The eventual repair to the issue corrected the particular trouble plaguing the function but, unfortunately, replaced it with one just as bad or worse.  Those customers who had been provided a free upgrade to the Shazam app discovered that when they attempted to use it to recognize the title track to Coldplay’s Viva la Velveeta the screens to their mobile devices invariably informed that they were listening to Cat Steven’s Foreigner Suite.

U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men released another statement again lamenting the failure of their product and promising a repair to the problem would be available soon.  The latest fix to the Shazam flaw, however, is demonstrating qualities far worse than either of the earlier versions.  Owner’s of this model of the application are universally discovering that any time it is used to identify any song by Coldplay their cell phones will flash the words Radio and Head across their screens several times before smoke starts pouring out of the device and then it catches on fire.

Special thanks to Walt Jameson for his contributions to this story and to Carl Wallace for bringing it to our attention.