Shazam‘s mobile app lets you figure out what song is playing on the radio, TV, or department store intercom by simply tapping a button on your phone and letting it listen for a few bars. Now Shazam is taking things to a whole new level by showing you lyrics as well.

When you tag a song using Shazam Encore for iOS, you can now press a “lyrics” button to bring up the new Shazam LyricPlay feature. The words to a song will then begin to scroll in real-time as the song plays. Right now there are lyrics for about 25,000 songs.

Shazam’s chief competitor SoundHound has offered song lyrics since last year, but SoundHound’s mobile apps don’t sync the lyrics with the music you’re listening to.

You can download Shazam Encore from the App Store for $5.99. There’s also a free version of the app but you’ll need to upgrade to a premium account if you want to use the LyricPlay feature.

via Mashable

Music identification and discovery service Shazam has announced that it’s now offering unlimited tagging with its Android app. Shazam lets you identify any song playing a radio, television, or any other real-world setting by holding your phone’s mic up to the music source.

Up until now users could identify up to 5 songs a month for free, but if you wanted to do more than that you’d have to upgrade to the Shazam Encore app which costs $4.99.

Unlimited tagging is being sponsored by eBay. But the deal is only good through January 1st, 2012. At that point Shazam free will start capping song tags at 5 per month again — unless Shazam lines up another sponsorship deal.

Shazam competitor SoundHound, meanwhile, has been offering unlimited song IDs since December. Shazam is available as a free download from the Android Market.

via Android Central

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the coolest music discovery app for iPhone has just been updated to version 4.0 with several new features including Facebook integration.  The latest version of Shazam now lets you see a feed of song that your Facebook friends have recently tagged. This is done through the new option “Shazam Friends.”

Shazam lets you identify songs playing on the radio, on TV, or anywhere in the real world by holding your phone up to the sound. You can also tag and purchase tracks through Shazam.

The new social features let you navigate through the songs that your Shazam friends have recently discovered. Through the said feature, you can listen to the music which your friends have tagged as well purchase them online.

Shazam 4.0 will also let you post tags to Facebook and Twitter, add comments as well as give your friends a chance to listen to music you’ve tagged if streaming services are available. To enable the Facebook-specific feature, you must log in to your account and allow the app to connect with Facebook.

Shazam is available both as a free download and premium version ($5.99) from the App Store.

SoundHound‘s mobile apps let you identify music with your phone. Hear a song on the radio and want to know who sings it? Just fire up the SoundHound app, hold your phone up to the music, and within a few seconds, the app should have an ID for you. It’s pretty awesome, especially for a free app. The only problem is that the free version of SoundHound was limited to five music IDs each month… until now.

Last week SoundHound announced that users of its free apps for Android, iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch can now identify as many songs as they like without ponying up any cash. The app also shows artist info, lyrics, and song previews.

The only catch is that the free app is still ad-supported, but if that bothers you, you can still pay $4.99 for the ad-free SoundHound Infinity app.

SoundHound is available for download from the Android Market and the App Store.

via Gizmodo

There are already a number of apps that let you identify a song simply by holding up your phone’s microphone to the audio source. SoundHound and Shazam are probably the biggest names in this relatively new music discovery business. But once you identify the song, then what happens? Sure, you could shell out some cash to buy that song that was playing during last night’s episode of Glee. But that’s about it.

Limili is a new app for iOS that doesn’t just let you purchase music after you’ve identified it. Limili works with subscription-based streaming music services so that you can automatically add a song to your playlist.

The limili app works with Grooveshark, Spotify, Rhapsody, Last.fm, We7, Play.me, iTunes, and YouTube.

The app costs $1.99, but after you’ve paid up, you can use it as much as you like to identify audible music or search for songs by title and artist. You can also post songs on Facebook. Limili clearly needs an internet connection to do its thing, but it works over WiFi, 3G, or Edge data connections.

via MobileCrunch

Shazam is a service for mobile phones that lets you identify songs by playing them into your phone’s microphone. It’s available for iOS, Android, and other platforms. The iPhone version of Shazam is available as either a free, limited download or a premium full version called Shazam Encore which sells for $4.99. And starting today, Android users have the same two versions to choose from.

The free version of Shazam will let you identify up to 5 songs per month, while you’ll have to pay $4.99 for Shazam Encore if you want to remove the 5 songs per month limit.

On the other hand, Shazam Encore does have another key feature that you won’t find in the free app: it links to Pandora, allowing you to create internet radio stations based on tracks you’ve identified with Shazam.The Encore edition also get music recommendations based on the songs they tag.

If you download the free version of Shazam from the Android Market, you’ll be able to use the premium features for 7 days. Existing Shazam users who already had the app installed on their devices before July 14th can upgrade to version 2.0 and keep the unlimited tagging functionality.

via Android Guys

SoundHound is a new app for Android that lets you identify music by holding your phone’s microphone up to a song that’s playing. Hear a song on the radio and want to know who the performer is? Just pull out your phone and fire up SoundHound.

If the concept sounds familiar, that’s because Shazam offers a similar service for Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Symbian phones. But SoundHound has a few nice tricks up its sleeve.

Scan to download

First, you don’t need to have a professional performance handy to identify a song. You can also sing or hum into your phone. Second, you can search by artist or song title and not just by audio. You can type into a search box or tap a button to say the name of a song or artist.

The app also lets you search for lyrics, music videos on YouTube, and links to purchase music. You can find similar artists, read artist bios, and share links via email or Twitter.

The basic SoundHound App is available as a free download and offers most features for free. But you can only use the audio recognition feature 5 times per month with the free app. You can upgrade to the full version for unlimited identifications and an ad-free interface for $4.99.

via Android Guys

Read the rest of this entry »