Shazam vs SoundHound iOS Comparison and Review
Shazam and SoundHound are both very similar applications for listening to music and telling you what it is – known as tagging. This is done by recording a short snippet of the song, sending it to their servers and scanning to see any matches in the songs. Shazam is more popular as it has been around longer, but now many people have been flocking to use SoundHound due to the user being able to sing to or hum to it and it recognises the song. I decied to test them to see how good they both were against each other. Both apps offer free versions as well as paid for versions (with no ads etc)
Demystifying Shazam (or Soundhound). (A`) ⊂ shazam(A), where shazam(A) is the set of hashes in the whole song A. There should be a sophisticated method of storing all these hashes in a.
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The first part of my comparison is down to the core features – how well it can it can recognise the songs.
The testing
Note before reading. The tests were done by leaving the app whilst scanning, but sometimes you can get faster results by ending it manually by tapping which often gets it right after around five seconds, but is not as reliable as leaving it on until it automatically stops.
The first thing I tested was playing music on my computer quite loudly with no other noises to see how quick the recognition is using a popular song
Shazam took seven seconds and got the answer right.
SoundHound took thirteen seconds, and got the correct answer.
The next test was seeing how they did with background noise – I played some white noise quietly to see if it affected the results.
Shazam took a few seconds longer and SoundHound took the same amount of time.
The third test I did was seeing how they worked with humming or singing. SoundHound is advertised as being able to do this, but Shazam is not.
Shazam completely failed, and did not recognise a single tune I hummed and sang whereas SoundHound was correct when I hummed and I sang which was quite impressive.
After that I tested a non common song with no background sound – Allegro Non Molto by Antonio Vivaldi.
Shazam took three tries to get it right, the first two only saying ‘We couldn’t find a match’ and then giving a correct answer.
SoundHound failed it’s first test, but then after a few seconds, it found it on the second test.
When retrying using the same app I continued playing the piece to make sure that it was taking in a different part, but I started from the beginning when trying each app.
The user interface and features
Both apps offer a quite simple interface. As soon as you open the app, there is a large button to press to start listening and on SoundHound, you have the option in the settings to begin listening as soon as the app as launched.
On Shazam, you have five bottom menu items – My Tags – for looking through all the things you have let the device listen to – Discover – where you can view the charts and search for tracks – The large Shazam icon – for tagging the music – Friends – for connecting to Facebook and seeing what they have tagged – Settings – for about, managing notifications, signing into Facebook.
After tagging a song, you can play a preview, go to an iTunes download link, share using Facebook, Twitter and Shazam, YouTube videos, lyrics, artist info, concert and tour info, album review, delete tag, and at the bottom, there is text saying the album, label and when it was tagged.
On Sound Hound, you have a more integrated menu bar ( not the app standard gray with icons) with history where you view songs you have tagged, what’s hot, with categories songs like ‘Hottest’ and Underplayed’,’upgrade’ to buy the full app and a final one which controls the music on your phone and sees your library.You can select one, and it will give you the same details as if tagged. On the main screen there is also a back and forward arrow buttons on the top left to view your history, and a help and settings icons in the top right. There is also a search bar to search for a song with text or your voice.
Once tagging the song, you can view the album art, song name, artist, share options, play it (if its on your device), preview, bookmark, lyrics, relevant YouTube video links, tweets about the song, recommended songs and song’s album appearances.
Pricing
There are free versions for both and paid which include slightly more features and no ads.The SoundHound pricing is slightly more simple than the Shazam, you just pay a one off fee of £4.99 (although it goes down in sale sometimes) whereas and with Shazam you can buy it as an app for £3.99 or use the free Shazam app to pay for a yearly subscription of £2.49.
Overall
On the testing side, they both do quite well – Shazam is faster but makes more mistakes and can’t do singing or humming by the user but SoundHound is rarely wrong, can deal with singing and humming but the recognition speeds are slower.
On the user interface side, SoundHound seems a bit more cluttered, but graphically more fun. Because of its design, its not as easy to use as Shazam until you get used to it. Shazam is nicely laid out, but seems slightly boring as it has a regular menu buttons but it is easier for a first time user.
The features – they both have nearly identical features – sharing using social networking, buying in iTunes, viewing lyrics etc.
My opinion
I chose SoundHound as it does do singing and humming I which is a very useful feature, but Shazam is still a great app if you want faster speeds.
Should you buy them? In my opinion, no, the free versions are fine. Who cares if you have to endure having to watch tiny banner ads while you scan a track for ten seconds. Also, the features they add are so minimal. If you do want to get rid of the ads or want the additional features, wait until either are on sale, or there are cheaper competitors.
Although they both are very good at what they could do, they could be faster and more accurate (and maybe cheaper). Shazam claims ‘lightning fast tagging’ and SoundHound ‘the world’s fastest music recognition’ but neither live up to those claims – lightning travelling at 3,700 miles per second does not match up to Shazam’s five second wait and SoundHound is slower than Shazam! Both statements proved incorrect!
So finally, I would rate them both a 4/5, they could both be improved by speeding up their recognition speeds.
What do you think? Agree or disagree? Post in the comments what you think.
* I didn’t write earlier that internet connection speed is a big part in determining which one is faster as they need to contact the server. I have reasonable broadband speeds, but it depends on what type of connection you have (3G, 4G, wi-fi etc). Also, their severs need to fast as well so the recognition is quicker.
Shazam is basically a mobile phone-based music identification application, that uses a mobile built-in microphone to gather a brief sample of music being played. Shazam headquarters is in London and company was founded in 1999 by Chris Barton. It is basically used to search the matching music or artist. If a match is found, information such as the artist, song title, and album are relayed back to the user. There are basically 3 applications that are offered by Shazam like, 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. If you are confused that how it works, then let me make you clear, Shazam identifies songs based on an audio fingerprint based on a time-frequency graph called a spectrogram. Today we are here to explain and share with you that what are the alternatives of Shazam application. You can download Shazam for PCusing our own method.
Alternatives of Shazam
In this topic we are going to discuss that, Shazam is considered as one of the best application, but still there are other app that can compete Shazam. Not taking much of your time let’s move on to the top 5 alternatives of Shazam;
1. SoundHound: First alternative of Shazam is SoundHound, this application was first known as Midomi until December 2009. This application allows you to identify music by humming, singing or playing a recorded track. You can download this application for Android and smartphone from Google play store and iTunes app store. This application also allows you to identify music by speaking or typing the name of the artist or song. A feature called LiveLyrics displays a song’s lyrics in time with the music, if they are available. Double-tapping on those lyrics moves the music to that point in the song.
2. Tunatic: Second alternative of Shazam is Tunatic, that is a freeware music identification program. With the help of this application you can analyse a song by recording it via microphone or just by playing it through the sound card. If a match is found of your music Tunatic will return the title of the song and the author along with a link for more information. The database is created with information that users can upload with a program called Tunalyzer.
3. MusiXmatch: Our next alternative for Shazam is MusiXmatch, that is mobile phone app that contains a searchable database of more than 6 mln lyrics in more than 28 languages. It scans all the songs in your music library on your smart phone and finds lyrics for all tracks. This application was founded by Massimo Ciociola and a group of co-founders on 21st Jan 2010.
4. SongKong: Next alternative is SongKong, it is basically a music organization and tagger application, that is designed to simplify the task of managing your digital music collection. User interface if this application is very easy and simple, that means you can match your songs from online databases and updates your songs with the correct information from these databases, including artwork. SongKong can even match songs that have no metadata by using audio fingerprinting.
5. TuneUp Mobile: Our last alternative of Shazam is TuneUp mobile, this application quickly and accurately identifies any song that it “listens to” with the click of a button. It also helps you to get lyrics, buy songs from iTunes, share your songs to Facebook and Twitter, and so much more.
Apps Like Soundhound
This is all about the top 5 alternatives of Shazam from our Shazam for PC. We still think Shazam’s got everyone beat because of its huge collection and the legal channels it’s gone through to make sure they have the license to do what they do. What do you think of Shazam and other related apps? Feel free to share your valuable comments and feedback for the same. You should share this post with your friends and relatives.