Blog 6: SoundHound

"Whats that song?"

What is SoundHound?

SoundHound is an application that allows users to identify music by humming, singing or playing a recorded tracks. It is only available on mobile services, specifically iPhone and Androids. It was launched in 2007 by Melodis Corporation by Keyvan Mohajer. It was funded by Global Catalyst Partners, TransLink Capital and Walden Venture Capital. You can download this app for free on the Apple App Store, Google Play and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. You can also speak or type the name of the artist or song. 

SoundHound on an iPhone and an iPad

What Makes SoundHound Effective?

SoundHound's competitors is Shazam. But unlike Shazam, SoundHound can recognize music from singing, humming, speaking typing as well as from a recording. The company has a 'Sound2Sound" technology that helps with recognizing the song. This technology can make poorly-hummed performances to professional recording. 

The app also shows lyrics, links to the video of the song on YouTube, links on iTunes, the ability to launch Pandora Radio and recommendation to other songs. The feature that displays the lyrics is called LiveLyrics. You can double tap the points of the lyrics and this will move the song to the part where those lyrics are played.

There are three versions of this app, SoundHound, SoundHound Infinity and Hound. SoundHound is the free version but includes banner ads, SoundHound Infinity is $6.99 USD but does not have banner ads. Hound is only available to search songs by speaking into it.

Example of a song with lyrics

How to Use SoundHound?

1. Download the app from the store convenient for you (for example the Apple App Store for iPhone users).
2. Once you've download the app, take your device near the song that you want to identify.
3. Play the song, and hold your device near it.
4. Once the app recognizes the song you've exposed it to, it will how you options to what the song may be.
5. Click on the one that you think is correct.
6. You will be provided with options to lyrics, bookmark, share, buy and etc.

For more information on SoundHound click here

The Layout to various screens of SoundHound