If “What song is this?” is your first response whenever you hear a good tune at a party or a concert and you want to discover apps that help you find good music, this guide is for you.
This guide will help you satiate your need to find good music around you by using some of the best apps and web apps to do the same. Here we have a list of the top 10 Best mobile apps and web services on android and iOS that will answer the question, “What song is this?”
The algorithm of some of these services is so advanced that even if you hum the tune, they will recognize the song and tell you the name. So let’s get started with the best apps to identify songs on your smartphone.
Identify Music Playing Around You (2022)
The following are the best apps and services that can let you identify “what song is this?” and let you discover songs on the go.
1. Using Google Assistant
Google assistant on android is the easiest and most handy way to identify songs. And surprisingly it works really well. Once you trigger the google assistant by saying “Hey Google” or by swiping up from the edges if you are on Android 10 (or above), just say “What is this song?“.
Now bring your phone near the music source and google assistant will start identifying. The song recognition accuracy of google assistant is quite good as it was able to identify songs playing from quite far away as well.
What’s even more interesting is that you can hum the tune or sing the song yourself and Google Assistant will recognize it within seconds.
You can even set a song identification widget if you happen to suck in identifying songs often. To do this, just tap and hold on to your Android’s home screen till you get haptic feedback. Now tap on “Widgets“. Scroll down till you find the google head and under that head, you will find a “Sound Search” Widget.
Long press on that and you will be able to place the sound search button on your home screen. Now you have a dedicated sound search button on your home screen.
Now, whenever you need to look for a song, tap on that widget to quickly perform a sound search and discover songs on the go.
2. Use Siri
Just like google assistant on android, Siri on the iOS platform also allows you to perform a sound search and know the name of the song playing.
When you hear a song that you want to identify, just open Siri and say “What song is this?“, “What song is playing?” or “Identify this song“. Siri will start working and identifying your song in no time.
It will also give you a suggestion to open the song in apple music. If you are an apple music subscriber, you can just tap on the song suggestion to start listening to it right away.
3. Shazam
This one is the most popular out there, so much so that people use the term “Shazam it” while referring to music recognition. Shazam is a popular app available on both Android and iOS. The moment you open the app you will be impressed by its simple yet effective UI.
You get a search button in the center using which you can search for songs. Just tap on it and point the device towards the music source. Now Shazam will take a moment to recognize the song for you and display the details. You can even listen to the song on Spotify or Apple music if you like, from the app.
If Shazam is not your hit, here are the 7 Best Shazam Alternatives that you can try instead!
4. Sound Hound
Developed by Soundhound. inc, an audio and speech recognition company. SoundHound has one of the best song recognition software, that can identify the title even in a slightly noisy environment, where others might fail to work. It is powered by their in-house voice AI, Houndify. Voice assistant is one of its significant features. You can trigger it just by saying “Hey SoundHound” followed by the name of the song you want to discover. You can also use the voice command and ask some trivia questions about the song or artist. SoundHound also uses LiveLyrics to show lyrics as the song is playing.
You can play the discovered song right inside the app or add it to your Spotify playlist. But it only saves 5 song discoveries, you do need to log in to store more searches. The only downside it has is that it shows ads.
5. Genius
Genius offers the world’s largest collection of lyrics and crowdsourced musical knowledge, with over 1.7 million song lyrics in its database. Because it is community-based software, it is a treasure for serious music fans. You may have come across their YouTube channel while exploring the internet (Genius YouTube channel) where you can get a plethora of data, trivia, and news about the business, and musicians.
Genius uses ACRCloud to fetch lyrics, which in my experience is snappy and takes a couple of seconds to find the song lyrics from the sound. You can play your discovered song inside the app from sources like YouTube or Vimeo. It can also read your music notification to identify the music and fetch its lyrics. But the app itself is crowded and it might overwhelm someone.
6. Musixmatch
Want a music player, that can identify songs? Musixmatch is the one you should be checking out. FloatingLyrics is the best feature of Musixmatch. It enables instantly synchronized lyrics from various music streaming apps like Spotify, Youtube, Pandora, Apple Music, etc., And offers lyrics translation in various languages.
On the flip side, you can’t use Musixmatch without signing up and it shows ads. You can remove those ads and enable offline lyrics by paying for their premium subscription.
7. BeatFind or Music Recognition
For some odd reason, the name of the app in the Playstore doesn’t match its package name. But what’s in the name, right? BeatFind, just like genius also uses ACRCloud to fetch music details and can search a song within seconds. It also has integration with services like YouTube, Spotify, and Deezer. BeatFind can also make your smartphone’s flash sync with the music and display a visualizer. You can turn this feature on by tapping on the ‘bolt’ icon.
Overall, BeatFind just works fine for song identification, but if you want more out of it, you should probably look for some other option.
BeatFind is only available for Android as of now.
8. MusicID
MusicID has one of the most functional user interfaces in this list of Best Apps and Web Apps to Identify Songs. It’s the only app that will give you an ad-free experience. MusicID uses GraceNotes technologies to identify music. Song recognition is relatively fast within seconds. You can also add comments to the song to ID it.
Your app homepage will show all your song discoveries. And if you want more info about the song or artist, tapping on the song will display that information in a beautiful card-based interface.
MusicID is available on iOS and Android.
9. Midomi
We have covered SoundHound in this list itself to identify “What song is playing?”. Now we have Midomi, the web version for music identification, powered by the SoundHound. The process is very simple, open the Midomi website and click on the big “SoundHound” button. Midomi website might ask you to allow microphone permission, allow it. Now play any song/hum a tune and Midomi will use the SoundHound algorithm to find what song is playing and let you know instantly.
The user interface is really simple and it just gets the song identification work done within seconds. You will also get options to play the said song on Amazon Music, Apple Music, and other popular streaming services.
Check out Midomi’s website here.
11. AHA Music
AHA Music is another web service that can identify music by identifying the tune. It can even identify the song if you hum into the microphone. We tested both modes, where the “Identify Songs by Recording” mode just works fine, while the “Identify Songs by Humming / Singing” mode is a hit or miss. The website however is very basic (a bit unpolished too) and doesn’t offer much apart from the recognition service. For desktop users, AHA Music offers browser-based extensions for identifying songs.
Check out Aha Music’s Website by clicking here.
What Song is this? Identify Music in 2022
So this was our take on the best music identification apps using which you can find out “What song is playing?”. All of these services are very reliable, the ones I love the most are shazam for the quick recognition and database of songs and MusicXmatch for its Lyrics syncing feature.
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