If you have an iPhone, chances are you’ve probably come across the song-identification app Shazam in the AppStore. What you may not have known is that there’s an alternative to Shazam that’s better and faster (there’s a song title pun in here somewhere, but we’ll steer clear for now) at identifying songs. That app is called SoundHound, and they’ve just today countered Shazam’s freemium offering with a freemium iPhone app of their own. With patent pending song identification algorithms and shamefully speedy processing times, SoundHound is about to give Shazam a run for their money.
For those of you not yet aware, SoundHound and Shazam are two iPhone apps that help you scratch that itch on your brain when you hear a song and just can’t put a finger on it. When you hear a song that you can’t immediately identify, just fire up either app and let it listen to the mystery music. The apps will record a snippet of the song, send it to the server, analyze the track, and identify the song (including artist, album, etc. information). It doesn’t matter if you’re in the car, in a club (yes, they work rather well noisy environments), or at a restaurant – you just hit the app icon and you’re halfway to Song Recognition-ville!
So, what’s the big deal with SoundHound? Well, it’s “better” than Shazam because it does all the cool song-ID tricks that Shazam is capable of doing – returns song information, links to buy the song, YouTube music videos, and sharing options – and then throws a couple extra features into the mix. SoundHound offers song lyrics, artist biographies, and even discographies with every song that it identifies. It also integrates into your iPhone’s iPod music player, so you can identify music through SoundHound and then continue playing songs from your own music library without leaving the app.
To top it all off, SoundHound also tracks song popularity – it monitors all kinds of playback stats (radio station airtime, online radio, etc.) – and compares that popularity ranking with how many times a particular song is being analyzed through SoundHound’s servers. This feature deserves it’s own paragraph because it gives the user a unique window into possible upcoming music trends. If a song is super popular but not getting many SoundHound requests, it could either mean the song is very well known or nobody cares about it. If the song is not very popular but is trending high on SoundHound, it could signal an upcoming trend. The app can be your secret tool for predicting popular songs weeks ahead of time!
It’s also “faster” than Shazam because it uses some magical patent pending algorithms that constantly analyze songs on the fly. That means it needs a third of the time that Shazam needs to ID a song. It also means SoundHound can analyze and return song information in just a fraction of the time that Shazam requires to analyze and return results. If you’ve ever tried to ID a song, only to have the song end while Shazam is still recording, you know how big of a deal a speedy search can be. That’s a big leg-up.
Until now, though, SoundHound has been a premium-only iPhone app. It used to cost $4.99 for unlimited song identifications (in fact, there’s still a SoundHound Infinity app that you can buy for $4.99), but today, SoundHound’s freemium iPhone app has hit the AppStore. The app is free, and comes with 5 free song ID’s per month. If you need more song ID’s, you can either get another 5 ID’s for $0.99 or upgrade to unlimited ID’s for $4.99. The app works on both iPhone and iPad.
Shazam, you should be scared. Apple may have been giving you “Featured App” love for a while, but it’s time to let SoundHound rule the roost as the big dog (there’s a mangled metaphor in here somewhere).
– SoundHound (Free) [iTunes link]