SoundHound

CNET Editors' review

by: Jaymar Cabebe on July 26, 2012

If you're having trouble naming that tune, just fire up SoundHound to speak, sing, hum, type, or record a song for the music-identification service to identify. It will return a song, complete with YouTube links, lyrics (when available), a list of albums on which the song has appeared, and even a link to purchase the song through Amazon. But more than just a song-identifier, SoundHound also shows you tons of information on the artist, including a bio and feeds from the artist's Facebook and Twitter accounts. It lets you bookmark tracks, and shows you lists of similar artists, so you can use the app to discover new music. Also, SoundHound also offers a trend listing where you can see songs other users have identified, most tweeted songs, and hottest songs at the moment. And of course, any track you access can be shared with friends via Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, and more.

While previously SoundHound capped its sung, hummed, or recorded song IDs to five per month, it has recently lifted the limitation. Now, even free users get unlimited IDs, while paid SoundHound Infinity users get a superconvenient home-screen widget and an ad-free experience.

One thing I think SoundHound for Android is missing is the "Listen on Start" option available to iOS users. As it is now, you still have to hit the Orange button to begin the ID process, which can be frustrating when you're trying to quickly identify a song before it stops playing. Of course, the Home-screen widget available to paid users does help in these circumstances.

Take heed that SoundHound (like rival Shazam) isn't a music downloader nor a streaming music app a-la-Pandora and the rest of that crowd. But it will identify as many songs as you throw at it, and then some.