Music recognition startup Melodis, creator of the popular iPhone application Midomi, on Tuesday announced a $7 million round of funding led by TransLink Capital.
The San Jose, California, company's funding now totals $12 million over 2 rounds.
“Raising this second round wasn’t that hard,” said Keyvan Mohajer, the company’s founder and CEO. “We were approached by many investors and are considered a hot company, so it was easier for us.”
Midomi, the company’s flagship product, in its free iPhone application version allows users to play, sing, hum, or whistle songs into their phones and discover the name of the forgotten song, artist, and album. This is especially helpful when one can only sing a single line in a song.
Once found, users can choose to listen to or purchase the song through iTunes or You Tube--You Tube announced Tuesday it will sell music through its site.
The full web version is similar, but doubles as a social-networking web site for music enthusiasts.
The success of the company’s iPhone application helped popularize a service that was avilable since January 2007, but had received little attention so far.
“The launch of our iPhone application boosted everything; from industry contact to licensing and collaboration, it has given us a lot of momentum,” said Mr. Mohajer, who added that the number of downloads of the app--soon to be released-- had been a lot higher than expected.
The company, which makes money through a licensing and advertising model, went mobile in February with the release of Midomi mobile for the Symbian operating system, the world’s leading mobile OS bought by Nokia a few months ago and made open source.
Midomi mobile is expected to be released on Windows Mobile, and the company is already working on an Android version as well. Android is Google’s open-source mobile operating system.
Mr. Mohajer says he does not fear London-based Shazam, another clever and popular music recognition application that claims 1.5 million iPhone users.
“Shazam only recognizes songs on the radio,” said Mr. Mohajer, “while we do the same thing, but also have the singing and humming capabilities. We have no competition.”
It remains to be seen if Midomi’s unique humming and singing options will make a difference among consumers and help the company take a lead in the music recognition arena.
So far Shazam has been doing better, at least in the iPhone App Store, and comes No. 27 in Apple’s most-downloaded free apps, while Midomi is No. 71.
Maybe Melodis, who wants to use the new funding to develop Midomi for other mobile platforms, should focus on taking the lead on the Apple store, which is fast becoming the de facto standard for mobile entertainment applications.