Shazam offers three types of applications; a free-to-try program simply called Shazam, their pay-to-play program called Shazam Encore, and their most recent addition called Shazam RED, launched in 2009. In late 2009 Shazam launched Shazam Encore. Shazam Encore was always unlimited and free of banner ads, until September 2012 when they started adding banner ads listing the words "Presented by" when tagging TV shows. Shazam RED is identical to Shazam Encore in features and price (both are priced at 5.99 USD) but a portion of the application payment for Shazam RED purchases is donated to support HIV/AIDS prevention, as part of the Product Red campaign to prevent the transmission of the HIV virus from mother to child by 2015.
Shazam is also a free or low cost Applicatio for Android, Apple, BlackBerry, Nokia, Windows Phone and most Sony Erricsson. Result is shown on the screen complete with details on Artist, Album, Title, Genre, Music label, lyrics, a thumbnail image of the song/album artwork, links to download the song on iTunes or the Amazon MP3 store and, where relevant, show the song's video on YouTube and give the option of playing the song on Spotify.
How it works
Do you want to identify a song by humming, Shazam works by analyzing the captured sound and seeking a match based on an acoustic fingerprinting a database of more than 11 million songs. Shazam identifies songs based on an audio fingerprint based on a time-frequency graph called a spectrogram. Shazam stores a catalog of audio fingerprints in a database. The user tags a song for 10 seconds and the application creates an audio fingerprint based on some of the anchors of the simplified spectrogram and the target area between them. Once the fingerprint of the audio is created, Shazam starts the search for matches in the database. If there is a match, the information is returned to the user, otherwise it returns an error.
Shazam can identify prerecorded music being broadcast from any source, such as a radio, television, cinema or club, provided that the background noise level is not high enough to prevent an acoustic fingerprint being taken, and that the song is present in the software's database.
Brief History
The company was founded in 1999 by Chris Barton and Philip Inghelbrecht, students at Berkeley, later joined by Avery Wang and Dhiraj Mukherjee.
On 3 April 2013, Shazam announced an exclusive partnership with Saavn, an Indian online music streaming service. The deal will add nearly 1 million songs in Indian languages to Shazam's database out of 11 Million songs.
Shazam help/FAQ
SoundHound which was known as Midomi until December 2009 is a mobile phone service that allows users to identify music by humming, singing or playing a recorded track. The service was launched by Melodis Corporation (now SoundHound Inc), under Chief Executive Keyvan Mohajer in 2007 and has received funding from Global Catalyst Partners, TransLink Capital and Walden Venture Capital.
It enables users to identify music by playing, singing or humming a song. It is also possible to speak or type the name of the artist or song. There are three versions of the app: SoundHound, SoundHound Infinity and Hound. Hound only allows users to search for artists or songs by speaking into it. Similar to the SoundHound app, Hound then returns a song preview, lyrics, album art and videos as well as artist bios and tour dates.
How it works
Unlike competitor Shazam, SoundHound can recognize tracks from singing, humming, speaking typing as well as from a recording. Sound matching is achieved through the company's 'Sound2Sound' technology, which can match even poorly-hummed performances to professional recordings The app then returns the lyrics, links to videos on YouTube, links to iTunes, ringtones, the ability to launch Pandora Radio as well as recommendations for other songs. A feature called LiveLyrics displays a song's lyrics in time with the music, if they are available. If lyrics are available for a song, it will show them as it plays. The technology, dubbed Multimodal Adaptive Recognition System (MARS), considers pitch, tempo variation, speech content and pauses in order to recognize samples.
Brief History
Midomi, renamed SoundHound in December 2009 with the launch of version 3.0 of the mobile app, was launched in beta in January 2007, as a website, with 2 million licensed tracks.
The first version of the app was released on the Apple App Store in July 2008. At the launch of Windows Marketplace for Mobile in October 2009, It joined the Android app store in June 2010. On January 2013, the BlackBerry version of the SoundHound was now available in BlackBerry World following the announcement and launch of BlackBerry 10. The premium version was now renamed SoundHound Infinity.
In September 2012, SoundHound announced that the app had passed 100 million users.
SoundHound FAQ
Heard a song but unable identify the artist, song title, and album, listening old melodies in Radio but unable to recollect the name or want to add to play list and download, you need Shazam/SoundHound. One of the best Music search application available and is very easy to handle.
Shazam/SoundHound gives you instant satisfaction when you want to know what song is playing: Identify music, Preview and purchase songs, Watch music videos, Get song lyrics, album reviews and more! It supports almost all the OS available.
Shazam or SoundHound
Two of the most popular music ID apps, Shazam and SoundHound, go beyond basic identification, adding features to help discover and share music. Both apps are available in free, ad-supported versions on multiple mobile platforms, including Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Windows Phone; or you can pay for an ad-free experience. At their core, these apps exist to help identify songs and save the IDs so you can find them later. You hear a song on the radio, during a TV show, or on a commercial, and you want to know what it is. The app listens to the sound, compares the sound to the service’s database, and returns its best guess. So very eager to get it installed and start exploring but confused which one is better.
Let’s see who wins and finds a place in your handset.
Listen up
When it comes to this primary task, Shazam and SoundHound both are at least best than any other music search applications provided. Both provide comparable accuracy, although you may find few times not giving accurate results. Each app seems to identify songs more quickly when singing was involved, while the instrumental sections took longer to match.
Both services only work with published versions of songs—if you’re at a concert or listening to a bootleg, the apps usually won’t help. Both work best if you’re listening in an environment without other audio distractions. In other words, don’t try to identify a song you hear playing in a crowded sports bar and expect to get accurate results.
You will be able to share the songs that you are listening with Facebook and Twitter and let the world know and get comments from friends and acquaintance.
What’s more in it?
If you have no clue what to listen to, Shazam’s Discover tab lists the top 20 songs tagged by its users. SoundHound expands on discovery options: Its Charts tab lists the most-tagged and most-tweeted songs from within the app, as well as some tracks promoted by SoundHound.
Both app has the option to hear and see the lyrics of the song you search along with the song name. In Shazam, the Discover tab includes the ability to search by title, artist, or album but won’t be able to sort by title etc. Both apps offer lyrics for some songs, but not all. SoundHound offers a link for a Google search if it doesn’t have the lyrics in its database.
Special talents
Shazam’s special feature is that it can identify television shows and ads in addition to music, a list of songs in the show and recent tweets about it, for example. The identification doesn’t seem to be episode specific, though. SoundHound has a feature which gives it an extra edge, a killer feature, SoundHound says it can ID a song that you sing or hum. SoundHound acknowledges you and represent your mind how terrible singer you may be and that too maximum of them correct.
Tag Results
Shazam displays the song title and artist, album cover, genre and tag date, and on a separate page, displays the artist’s bio. You can download the song on iTunes, look up similar tracks, the artist’s discography, and share the song on Facebook, Twitter or via Email. SoundHound shows the song title and artist, album cover and album release date. On SoundHound, you have far more options, with the ability to download the song on iTunes, look up similar artists, look up other songs on the album, or the artist’s entire discography, lyrics, videos on YouTube, tour dates, song album appearances, and share the song on Facebook or Twitter, and via email and SMS.
Tag Charts
Both apps have charts, with Shazam displaying the Top 10 most tagged tracks. SoundHound displays the Top 25 most tagged tracks, showing you which songs are getting hotter, and which are cooling down. In addition, they display the Top 25 most tagged tracks that aren’t getting much radio play.
Recently Tagged Tracks
Both apps display the tracks that have recently been tagged by other users. Shazam, for a change, makes use of the screen therefore making it visually appealing. SoundHound uses a small running ticker at the bottom of the screen, beneath the charts.
Tag History
Both apps allow you to browse your tagging history.
In Shazam, all tagged tracks are displayed in the sidebar on the left whereas In SoundHound, you can access your history from the menu in the sidebar on the left. In addition allows you to bookmark the tagged tracks that you’d like to hang on to.
Accuracy
It would seem as though SoundHound is clearly the better app between the two, but when it came down to the most important test of all, tagging music, Shazam was more accurate. Playing a remix of Elvis Presley’s Blue Suede Shoes, Shazam identified the correct track, but SoundHound identified it as the original song. With a live recording, Shazam identified it correctly, whereas SoundHound identified it as the recorded version. Several tries with different live songs yielded the same results. Of course as far as recorded songs are concerned, both apps yielded accurate results, and in most cases, SoundHound identified them with a much shorter recording than Shazam.
With Shazam, humming or singing the song won’t cut it. You have to play the original recorded music in order to have it tagged. With SoundHound you can actually hum or sing the song – but the results are hit and miss. Testing it out, we got the right track about one out of five times. But for full disclosure, I’m pretty much a terrible singer.
Conclusion
So how do you choose which song identifier is right for you? Either of these apps is fun to have within your mobile app collection. You never know when you’ll desperately need to know the name of that song. If you’re just interested in identifying music, I’d choose Shazam because of its superior interface. If you want to discover new music, however, SoundHound is a better choice. Shazam is the simpler app, perfect for people who simply want to tag a track and move on. SoundHound is better suited to music devotees who want to get all the information related to the song, and possibly even discover some new music along the way. The app can also serve as a replacement to the native iPod app, giving you a way to access and play the music on your iPad.
The free, but limited, version of Shazam is available to iPhone, Android, Nokia and Blackberry users, and as a free unlimited app for iPad users. The free SoundHound app is available to iPhone, iPad and Android users, and as a paid app for Nokia users.
Each song identifier has its own way of delivering results, and they also differ as far as what you can do with those results.
Which app do you prefer – Shazam or SoundHound? Let us know in the comments
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