SoundHound is a music recognition app that will tell you what song you're hearing or thinking of.
You can use SoundHound by pointing your iPhone at the speakers while a song is playing, hum or sing the track, or perform a text search. We were very impressed by both the speed and the accuracy of SoundHound and found it faster and more reliable than its more famous rival, Shazam.
Once SoundHound has found the track it will pull up a wealth of information and resources relating to that song. You can stream the song, bookmark it, access related videos on YouTube, look up the lyrics, read artist biographies, and view other songs on the album. You can even share your discovery via email, Twitter, Facebook or SMS. If the track is available on iTunes you can click a button to take you directly to the page where you can buy it.
Despite having all of these features, SoundHound remains very simple to use. One tap of the large button is enough for SoundHound to start 'listening' to what's being played or hummed, and all of the track and artist resources are well organized.
The main thing lacking from SoundHound at the moment is support for multi-tasking in iOS 4. If a song playing on the radio and coming to an end, it can be frustrating having to wait so long for the app to open.
Overall, SoundHound is a very competent music recognition app that is a worthy alternative to Shazam.
