On Saturday January 12th the free online music service Chordify was launched. Exactly three months after the presentation of the beta-version of the site at the ISMIR (International Society for Music Information Retrieval) Conference in Porto, Chordify has been made available for the public at large during the Eurosonic Noorderslag festival. Chordify is a cutting edge service and a revolutionary tool for both novice and trained musicians. After the official launch, in which multiple guitar players climbed the stage to simultaneously play along with a song on Chordify, the trendsetting bands Paceshifters, Mr. Richard and Town of Saints made their appearance. The official launch of the website was the closing act of a four day event. From Wednesday till Friday the Chordify team demonstated it’s service in the Chordify popup-café at the Grote Markt Groningen where Inge van Calkar, the German band HONIG and Paceshifters played their chords. With the official launch of Chordify, the service is now available for everyone.
Chordify is a free online music service – made for and by music enthusiasts – that transforms music, from YouTube, SoundCloud or your private collection, into chords. Our service automatically recognises chords from the audio signal, and aligns them to the music in a simple and intuitive player. Chordify makes state-of-the-art music technology available to a broader audience, making it easier and more fun to play along with your favourite tracks.
Chordify development will not stop here. Besides further perfecting the chord transcription algorithms, the full potential of the Chordify platform will be explored further. During the beta stage we received a lot of feedback from our users. Some of these suggestions – like the support for guitar diagrams, and an improved site navigation – have already been implemented before the launch.
The Chordify website will always remain free of charge. This is possible because the site has been designed to be supported by wallpaper advertising. The wallpaper space, besides its use for promoting bands and music we endorse, is also available for commercial partners. The aesthetic property of the images is highly valued: the adver- tising look like posters, lifestyle photography, or art. Logos and text are limited to a minimum. Similar advertising models have proven to be successful in services like WeTransfer and 22tracks.
In the near future, Chordify will be extended with additional paid features that will make the platform even more attractive. Users with a premium account will be able to maintain a library of songs, and download, print and adjust chord sequences, for instance. Also, Chordify can already be used on tablets and smartphones, but we plan to release a paid app soon.