Become a pop star down the phone

  Want to be a pop star? Don’t want to wait in a queue for 12 hours before being humiliated by Simon Cowell, Ozzy’s wife and the bloke who inflicted Westlife on us? You could soon test out your tonsils down the phone instead with the Ring ‘n Sing service.

The phone-based game uses a "pitch-tracking algorithm" to compare different voices. So, select your song from those on offer, listen to the song being sung by a professional crooner, then sing your version down the line. The system compares the two renditions before giving your effort a mark out of ten. As far as we know, you don’t have to sit through 5 minutes of criticism about your hair, clothes and choice of song before the result comes through.

The system has been developed by UK speech recognition specialist VoxGen in association with Vocability, a leading provider of hosted speech applications. It’s not available to call just yet, but expect to see the Ring ‘n Sing service advertised like crazy during the next series of the X-Factor.

VoxGen website

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