VentureBeat

Ever hear a catchy tune but not know the name of the song or the artist? Midomi, a web site and mobile service, lets you play a recorded song or sing a snippet of it yourself, and then it matches that information to its library of more than 17 million song samples. Then, you can listen to the recommended samples and go buy the song on iTunes or watch related videos on YouTube.

Midomi’s parent company, San Jose, Calif.-based Melodis, has just raised $7 million from TransLink Capital, JAIC America and Global Catalyst Partners, on top of a previous $5 million in funding.

This, I had to test for myself. Using the Midomi iPhone application, I warbled in my rendition of the perennial karaoke favorite Unchained Melody (the high part, you know, “I neeeeeed your loooooove”). Midomi matched my emotional outpouring to works of Stevie Wonder, The Flaming Lips and a bunch of songs that weren’t in English, but no Righteous Brothers. So I tried out something more within my voice range — the classic hit House of the Rising Sun — and the service worked.

Midomi originally launched last year to mixed reviews (see comments on our original story).

Midomi’s not alone in trying to do this form of music search. Rival Shazam matches recorded tunes you play with its own library, but for better or worse doesn’t let you sing the tunes yourself. Both companies also have iPhone apps — Shazam has the 27th most popular free iPhone app, while Midomi comes in at 71st. Shazam has also recently raised $6.6 million in funding, on top of previous funding that the company told us was in the “multiple millions.”

RateItAll, a site that lets users write reviews of any topic and receive a share of ad revenue for doing so, has raised $800,000 in funding.

Co-founder Lawrence Coburn describes the company as “distributed Yelp for everything,” and the site’s front page shows off a wide range of topics — the “featured lists” include reviews of Barack Obama’s potential vice presidents, mobile social networks and NBA finals players. If users write a review, they get a portion of the associated advertising revenue through the Google AdSense API, which should certainly encourage people to contribute. (Yelp, on the other hand, sorts its reviews by location, is best-known for restaurant reviews and doesn’t offer any financial incentive to users for contributing — although the lack of payment hasn’t led to a dearth of reviews.)

The reviews can also be distributed to other sites as widgets.

To get a sense of the content available on RateItAll, I checked out the mobile social networks list. Although it includes 23 networks, only six have been rated, and most of them have only been reviewed once or twice. (The exception is Twitter.) Some other lists have more activity, but the variety of lists is more impressive than the content on any one of them.

Still, the numbers Coburn offers are pretty good. The site was founded in 1999 but lay dormant for many years, and was relaunched in 2006. With just one full-time employee, RateItAll made $160,000 in revenue last year. That team now includes four people, and RateItAll reported 1 million visits in May.

Investors include Accelerator Ventures, JAIC America, Pacific I&T Ventures and Eric Di Benedetto. Although the press release doesn’t disclose the size of the funding, Coburn confirmed that it was $800,000, as reported by TechCrunch. Coburn says he hopes to close a second part of the round in the next month or so, potentially bringing the total funding to $1.3 million.