Shazam, Soundhound and MusixMatch: The Choice Remains Difficult

One of the greatest attractions of Music apps is that they help us to identify some of our favorite songs. There are times when you listen to a song but are unable to identify which song is it.

At times it is also difficult for fans to identify songs in challenging environments like in a restaurant or a laundromat. Now among the several music apps available, SoundHound, Shazam and MusixMatch have emerged as three of the best music apps today. If you find it difficult to make a choice between these three apps then here’s your chance to settle for the best of them.

There was a test conducted on the free versions of all the 3 apps on iOS and Android with an attempt to identify at around 50 songs in the midst of varied conditions. The music that was tested contained different genres including American rock (old), hip hop and pop and they had been tested in all types of environment including homes, coffee shops, restaurants, bars and stores.

What did the Experiment Result To?

Now, as far as the findings are concerned MusixMatch stood in no comparison with the other two apps mentioned here. Both Shazam and SoundHound proved more effective by being able to identify twice as more songs. However, one thing going for MusixMatch is that it is basically a lyrics app.
When the choice boiled down to SoundHound and Shazam, it became a bit difficult to choose one as both of them performed equally well with popular songs.

MusiXMatch again got in to the scene when it came to the identification of international and foreign language songs. All the three apps delivered mixed results in this case though SoundHound edged past by a margin.

Image Credits: evolver.fm

One of the experimenters tried to identify several genres in a Jamaican restaurant including ska, reggae and dancehall songs and SoundHound was the only app that could identify one of the songs. However, on spinning all the apps at a local laundromat playing Spanish songs the results came empty.


Listed below are some other findings:
• Mashups presented some difficulty for all three apps
• In case of an international (Icelandic) song SoundHound and Shazam were able to identify the instrumentalist

The Verdict: How Difficult Is It To Make a Choice?

The performance results of both SoundHound and Shazam remained very close- therefore, the experimenters refused to draw clear conclusions in this regard. Out of the fifty attempts (for each of the apps) SoundHound identified 28 songs while Shazam identified 27 songs. However, it should be mentioned that that all these three apps were well equipped to “to take” the songs to make due attempts at identifying them. The performance of Shazam was particularly notable in case of the noisier environments or ambiances.

The choice is clearly between Shazam and SoundHound. If you have a computer, you can get Soundhound For PC, but unfortunately Shazam doesn't have a PC version.

   Sam

About the Author:

Sam is a seasoned blogger with considerable experience in the content industry. At present he is exclusively writing on technological topics.