SoundHound

Found this Facebook post from one of my office mates and immediately decided to investigate it. I may have the intuition to figure out how our research tool in the office works (programming perspective) but sometimes I’m a complete doofus when it comes to technology. Especially technology that integrates several different technology (read: Facebook + Twitter + WordPress – took me ages to figure it out!). So after a couple of days of poking, clicking, pressing, testing…

The verdict?

It’s a great utility tool for those who are bad with remembering music artists and song titles like me. All you have to do is sing or hum the song and SoundHound will do its best to identify the song for you. And voila! Instant reminder for you to download that song (well not really, it’ll just tell you the name of the artist and the title of the song).

So, how does it work? Well the two basic features that you want is the “music recognizer” as well as the “title/artist recognizer.” The first one requires you to sing or hum part of the song so SoundHound can search for that song. It will even work if you hold it near a speaker; your phone, for example, or a radio. It goes to say that some songs are more easily recognized than others. The second one has two options: you either type or speak the title of the song or name of the artist and it will look for a match. The latter’s a little tricky. I mean, it can easily recognize when you say, “Jay-Z.” But it seemed to have trouble matching “Beyoncé.” I guess you really have to speak her name clearly and with the proper diction.

Once the song or artist as been identified, you have a couple of options. If it’s a song, you can tap on the title and it will take you to a page with more details, such as artist, ability to add the song to a bookmark, share the song on social networking sites, lyrics, a music video if there’s one, and others.

The app is available for iPad, iPhone, and Android phones. There’s a free version in addition to a paid version. Haven’t tested out the paid version. Perhaps that one allows to directly download the songs you were looking for instead of having to go through iTunes. Or maybe there are more features.

SoundHound interface: