Review: SoundHound

By Sahil Mohan Gupta, NDTV | Updated: 5 June 2012 16:12 IST

Highlights

SoundHound is the state of the art music identification app which identifies lyrics, artist information and YouTube videos of a song

Available on: iOS, Android, Symbian
Reviewed on: Android
Price: Free (Extra $5.99 for added functionality)

If you've ever been stuck in that annoying situation in which there's a song playing and you can't remember what it's called no matter how hard you try, then rejoice - your days of musical mystification are over with SoundHound. Shazam started the trend of apps that made use of social music identification technology and many believe SoundHound has better song recognition algorithms.

Usability:

For this review we are testing the paid Android version, which is slightly different from the iOS version as itfeatures an extra widget for the home screen.

The moment we open the app, the large 'Tap Here' icon welcomes us. The 'Tap Here' option basically starts the song detection engine. We also get a search bar which enables searching for various artists. SoundHound also enables speech detection, so if we say the name of the song out loud the app will automatically find the song.

Once a song is detected, SoundHound downloads lyrics, YouTube Video and also enables us to play the song from our own library if it's present there. All these features are immensely helpful, as the app allows users to access all their musical content via a singular interface.

But the real magic happens in the song detection algorithms and these are clearly superior to the ones employed by Shazam. SoundHound easily found Tangerine Dreams' Firetongues unlike Shazam which didn't. SoundHound also correctly identified some Bollywood tracks as opposed to Shazam which again failed to do do, so SoundHound will probably find more takers among Indians.

Besides this, SoundHound also allows us to purchase songs and can actually play a song from the device's music library itself. This feature can come in handy as one does not need to switch applications to listen to music.

Like Shazam, SoundHound also includes trending playlists and most popular songs, which helps the user discover newer music.

Verdict:

If you are a music junkie then downloading SoundHound is a no brainer. Not only does it identify songs, it can download lyrics and show YouTube videos of the song. The only question is - which version to go for, the free one or the paid one? We can help you there as well. The free app includes most features and the paid version seem a little expensive, offering too little for the price tag.

Rating:

Usability - 4
Price - 2
Wow factor -4

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