In this article, we’ll be discussing the three best apps for identifying music you’re listening to. All three applications are cross-compatible with Android and iPhone alike, so you can enjoy the boons of these apps regardless of your platform of choice. Also see our article Let’s begin! App #1: Shazam – Shazam is one of the oldest applications in this arena, and as one of the oldest it’s also one of the best. Using Shazam is simple- open it, press a button and it’ll listen to music playing in the room and attempt to identify it.
Shazam does come with the occasional error, but as far as accuracy goes, it’s easily one of the best options available. It’s better to use an app like Shazam in environments where the music is louder than the people, though. App #2: SoundHound – Functionally, SoundHound is quite similar to Shazam, but with a few caveats. Namely, it doesn’t support monitoring without the app explicitly being open and used (unlike Shazam, which can be used in the background), but aside from that most of its functions are just about identical. Reports are mixed as far as accuracy goes, but it might be better at deciphering music in low-volume environments than Shazam, which is said to be better at getting to music through background noise.
Most benchmarks put these apps neck-and-neck, though. SoundHound is really just a Shazam alternative, but that’s OK. This next one changes things up just a bit to be interesting. App #3: musiXmatch Lyrics Player – musiXmatch has a song identification feature like the other two, but its accuracy falls way short of Shazam and its other contemporaries. Instead, this app is focused on searching for and finding lyrics, which then allows you to listen to songs on Spotify and YouTube. A lot of the biggest music searches people perform are for lyrics, and this app focuses mostly on that- it’s more a lyrics app that can identify music than a music identifier that gives out lyrics. Keep this in mind when using it.
Some Notes Mostly, you aren’t going to see a big distinction between these apps, since they’re basically doing the same things. It should be noted, however, that all of them have trouble with obscure and lesser-known artists: if you can’t find it on Spotify, there’s a good chance that these apps won’t be able to pull them up, either.
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Keep that in mind!