In a method for characterizing a signal, which represents an audio
content, a measure for a tonality of the signal is determined, whereupon
a statement is made about the audio content of the signal based on the
measure for the tonality of the signal. The measure for the tonality of
the signal for the content analysis is robust against a signal
distortion, such as by MP3 encoding, and has a high correlation to the
content of the examined signal.