Today, eTantrum.com has released their noncommercial, open source version of music identification technology, the Music ID Service. It is the first system to positively identify a music file based on its analogue waveform and acoustical characteristics. So far, the technology supports MP3, Vorbis, WAV, CDs, formats.

"The Music ID Service allows users to accurately identify exactly what they've got in their downloaded music files. The technology identifies the artists, the albums, song titles, and genre, and it labels it for you. That's a real breakthrough," said Jack Moffitt, Chief Architect of iCast.

The eTantrum company says this is how their new technology works: When a user loads a media player and starts to play a song or playlist, the eTantrum Music ID client creates a unique signature for the song(s) and forwards the signature(s) as a request to eTantrum's Song ID Servers. The servers then respond by loading the properly labeled information into the user's playlist. The Music ID Service is available for free download at the company's website.