As further testimonial to the fact that the investment community is warming up to “voice search,” Melodis, developer of the Midomi mobile music identification application, has raised $4 million in funding from Walden Venture Capital’s Larry Marcus and an unnamed mobile device manufacturer. The Midomi app is comparable to the freely downloadable Shazam (from Shazam Entertainment Ltd.) but it adds a very interesting twist. Earlier this year, Melodis struck a deal with musical instrument maker Yamaha that entitles it to use Yamaha’s “singing synthesis software” called Vocaloid. The combined technologies move mobile voice search into a new realm whereby Midomi can identify songs when a person does his or her best job of humming the tune.

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Tags: Speech recognition, mobile services, Speech enabled search