We’ve all been there: We hear a song but can’t remember it’s title, which can be quite frustrating. Music recognition apps can help you find the name of a song. Here are the best apps you can use to identify songs on Android, iPhone, your computer or online.
Shazam (Android, iOS, Windows, Mac)
Shazam is the best-known music recognition app. You can install it for free on your Android or iOS device, on your Windows PC or Mac.
- This app has a user-friendly interface. You can start the music identification by just tapping on the “shazaming” button. No registration/user account required.
- A huge downside of Shazam is that you need the original, prerecorded song. You can’t just sing or hum it.
- You can connect Shazam to your Spotify or Apple Music account.
- As an iPhone user, you don’t need to install the app: Shazam is integrated with Siri, meaning that you can ask Siri to identify a song.
- After identifying the title, you can listen to the entire song using Apple Music or you can watch the YouTube video. Shazam will also provide information about the song and it shows you similar music or other songs by the same artist.
- There’s a search history, in case you forget the name of the song. Based on your search history, Shazam will also create playlists for you.
SoundHound (Android, iOS, Windows)
Shazam’s biggest competitor is SoundHound. It comes in a free version with ads or as a premium version without ads (SoundHound Infinite). You don’t need an account to search for songs, but you must sign up if you want to save your search history.
- SoundHound has one unique feature that will make you want to install it instead of Shazam: it can recognize songs if you sing or hum them.
- The app also has a feature that allows you to search songs by lyrics. You can type or say the lyrics and SoundHound will identify the song.
- Thanks to a feature called LiveLyrics, SoundHound provides the lyrics of a song, in case you want to sing along.
- If you want to hear the full songs, you can opt for YouTube videos (free) or to connect SoundHound to your Apple Music or Spotify Premium account. SoundHound can be used as a music streaming app.
- Similar to Shazam, SoundHound is also available as an app for your Windows PC.
Musixmatch Lyrics (Android, iOS, Windows, Amazon’s Alexa)
Musixmatch Lyrics is actually an app created to help you find the lyrics of a song – but it comes with a feature that also allows you to identify songs that are playing around you.
- You can download and use this app for free, but you must sing up with your Google, Facebook, Apple account or an email address. There’s also a Premium version that will allow you to use additional features, like offline lyrics and translation.
- The app shows you the music charts in your region as well as new music albums and singles – and also provides the lyrics. But you can also search for a song and you’ll see the lyrics on your screen.
- If you want to listen to the song while reading the lyrics, you must connect the app to your Spotify, Apple Music or Amazon Music account.
- An additional feature of this app – that transforms it in a competitor for Shazam and SoundHound – is “Identify”. Like the other two apps, Musixmatch will identify songs playing around you (singing and humming won’t work). You will also get the lyrics of the song, if they are in the app’s database.
