Shazam, the pre-eminent music ID app for Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Phone has completed their first corporate acquisition, and have waste no time in integrating its features. LyricPlay syncs up with music as you’re listening to it, and shows you the words to the song in a sharp and animated format.
The new LyricPlay option shows up as you would normally tag a song: open the app, hold up your phone to the source of music as it’s playing, wait for the audio clip to go to Shazam’s servers, do its black voodoo identification magic, and come back with album details, artist biographies, YouTube music videos, and lots of other song info. It even plugs in to Pandora and Spotify if you want to stream the song to your phone later, or buy the track through Amazon. You can also share songs you’re listening to through Facebook and Twitter, if you’re into that kind of thing. Shazam’s primary competitor is SoundHound, which has the added bonus of being able to recognize sung, hummed, or even spoken music.
Unfortunately, LyricPlay is only available for those that spring for the premium version of the iPhone app, which is currently going for about $6 ($5 in the Android Market, $6 in BlackBerry App World). You can always stick with the free version, which will still let you have unlimited tags until next year. Download links for both apps are below – check ’em out!