WatZatSong: You Tell MeWatZatSong: You Tell Me

When we held Startup Camp in London, WatZatSong was one of the more intriguing new ventures. Raphael Arbuz' project lets the community help you figure out songs that you know some lyrics to, or a tune stuck in your head.Arbuz calls this a community search engine using the power of the crowd. Yeah, so we've heard that before. With WatZatSong, you can sing something into your mobile phone using an IVR service, or even play something straight off the radio or a recording. You can also simply use your computer microphone and record directly onto the site.

The community then enters what they think the song is, followed by voting on each of the potential answers. You can then go to WatZatSong's partner (retailer) sites to listen to samples of the voted answers and then, if the song is right, select the song to download/purchase. If you sing off key, someone is still likely to have an idea, so all of you pretenders can have at it!

When I sang a stunning rendition of "Tempted By The Fruit of Another" in hopes that I might at least cause a bit of head scratching, someone in the crowd watching the demo immediately picked the band (Squeeze). So this works on pretty much any level.

WatZatSong has been around since June 2006 in France, and launched in English in May 2007. It's just starting to show the service now and claims 20,000 members, mostly in France. Check out our conversation with Arbuz and his ridiculously French accent.