Shazam-like apps – alternative options for music recognition
Image Credit: Shazam
Looking for a free music identify app that isn’t Shazam? Here are two great music discovery apps to help find that song you just can’t place.
App for music recognition Shazam is fantastic for identifying music when you’re out and about, whether a song is playing in a bar, on the TV, or from someone else’s phone on the bus. But it’s not for everyone. So what trusted alternatives are there to Shazam?
We’ve narrowed your search down to two free Shazam-like apps that you can check out first. Next time you can’t remember the name of a song or want to discover the artist of a new track, try these options.
SoundHound
Shazam’s biggest competitor is the SoundHound app, widely considered to be a solid alternative. Like Shazam, SoundHound offers hands-free voice recognition – you can, for example, ask the app to find other songs by a certain artist.
SoundHound makes things simple with a big button right there on the home screen to begin listening for a song. You can also sing or hum into your device to search for that tune you just can’t quite remember.
LiveLyrics syncs with the song so you can follow the lyrics along in real time. You can play the full song through your Apple Music or Spotify membership or for free via YouTube, or just a 30 second preview sample.
Within the app you can make playlists and see charts of the most listened to on SoundHound. The app is totally free, although there are advertisements.
SoundHound also powers an alternative to Shazam on the web. Midomi lets you search for songs from your desktop, something that you can only do on Shazam if you’re an Apple user.
Musixmatch
Available on the Google Play Store and for iOS, Musixmatch specialises in finding lyrics to songs. It has partnered with Spotify to supply lyric syncing on the app.
When you head to the Identify tab on the app and tap the logo, Musixmatch not only quickly identifies the song playing but also matches to the current lyric, giving you a karaoke-like experience. Unlike Shazam, it can’t identify songs playing on other apps on your device.
Musixmatch is available as an app and also on desktop, which is especially helpful as there’s no current version of Shazam on desktop for Windows. That’s because Shazam is owned by Apple. Non-Apple users have to make do with the Shazam Android app.
Musixmatch is free to download, with prompts to upgrade to a paid Premium account for extra features.