Remember Shazam? SoundHound has taken audio-tagging to the next level, boasting a wealth of utterly compulsive and addictive features for your song identification.
By Leo Stiles
Any iPhone or iPod Touch user will remember their first experience using the App Store and discovering the little marvel of an app called Shazam, which could tag audio clips and tell you what you were listening to. SoundHound uses a similar concept but expands and refines it in a superior way that makes it an essential download, especially if you find the music app on the iPad a little lacking.
The headline feature of SoundHound is still audio tagging but this feature is far more flexible and accurate than Shazam, which often faltered when audio conditions were not up to scratch.
SoundHound by contrast is scarily accurate, even when confronted with a poor audio source. Speaking of poor audio sources, SoundHound lets you identify tunes with just the sound of your voice and despite an insanely poor rendition of Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name Of‘ used to test the this feature, SoundHound nailed the song on the first try – even humming it worked.
We’re afraid this is as exciting as screenshots of SoundHound get
Once a track has been identified you will have access to a wide variety of related information on the song including lyrics and related YouTube videos which can be played in-app, rather than being whisked off to the YouTube app. More information is also available for you to explore with artist biographies, album and song history, with everything linked together to provide a Wikipedia-style reference guide to any artist.
Any result can be bookmarked and shared via Twitter and Facebook and if the song is listed on iTunes, there is a button that will whisk you off to the music store to buy a copy if you are so inclined. There are also some manual search options which ensure you don’t have to warble into the iPad’s microphone every time you want to learn more about a song that’s stuck in your head for the last day and a half.
You don’t have to have music on your mind to enjoy the app either and you can just explore what’s currently riding high in the charts. This is fine if you want to know what our friends in the US are listening to but a lack of regional options mean there is no hope of finding something more culturally attuned to Irish ears.
Far more interesting is the ‘Underplayed Chart’ which showcases songs that are popular with SoundHound users and is a lot more relevant, with Two Door Cinema Club placing at number three at this time of writing.
At the end of both charts is an information bar which scrolls live search results by other users and is great for finding the craziest and most eclectic stuff and is an endless curiosity.
The last feature of the package is the library, which gives you in-app access to your music library, including playlists and podcasts with all the extra details that you get from a search. It’s all standard stuff but the overall package is so complete that we haven’t used the standard music app since.
Premium or free?
SoundHound comes in two flavours: premium and free. Premium gives you all features without any advertising for €3.99. The free version is obviously free but there are a number of fairly unobtrusive advert boxes spread around the screen. You can still use the search and media player functions on the free version so it really depends on your advertising tolerance.
Overall, SoundHound is a really complete package and in its free version it’s a nigh-on essential download for music lovers, though we must add that €3.99 is a quite a high price to pay for ad removal and we don’t think that the price quite justifies it.
SoundHound is a universal app and will work on all iOS devices.
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