SoundHound review
SoundHound lives up to its promise, recognizing music playing around you as well as most of the songs you sing or hum. Featuring lyrics, artist bios, and other albums by the artist, as well as related artists and hot songs, SoundHound proves to be a great app for discovering new mainstream music.
Pros
Accurate and knowledgeable: SoundHound identifies in a matter of seconds most of the songs it listens to so long as they have vocals or a strong beat, and then packs in a neat interface all the info you need to discover the artist and their other albums, as well as a short preview feature for many songs. The similar artists section can kindle your passion for new genres.
Can recognize songs you sing or hum: As the developers boast, this is a unique feature that no other app we know of offers and that works surprisingly good so long as you sing or hum loudly. What's great about it is that usually you get multiple recommendations, so that you can discover several songs that you will like.
World Map: The songs other users are discovering in real-time appear on a live map, so that you can find out what artists are hot in other countries.
Cons
Has difficulties with some genres: Trying to identify piano, instrumental, or jazz music or non-mainstream artists with this app leads to plenty of failed searches.
Crashes: While using this app we ran into several random "Unfortunately, this app stopped working" errors leading to a black screen.
Bottom Line
SoundHound stands out from other similar apps thanks to its ability to recognize the songs you hum or sing, but comes second to Shazam in terms of accuracy. The technical issues are also a bit annoying, but they're infrequent enough not to ruin the user experience. Since this app is free, you have no reason not to try it.
