Tip of the Week: Can’t Name that Song? These 3 Apps Can!

Listening to the radio is a great way to pass the time during your morning commute, especially if you don’t have a CD player or an auxiliary port in your vehicle. While listening to the radio, you might hear a catchy tune that you want to look up later. Now, thanks to various smartphone apps and technology solutions, you can do it while listening to the song.

Here are three ways that you can use your smartphone to identify songs you hear while out and about.

Shazam
If you’re looking for a free way to identify music using your smartphone, look no further than Shazam. According to the Google Play store, it’s used by more than 100 million people every month to identify music and lyrics. Shazam has a simple and easy-to-use interface. After you download the app, all you have to do is tap the on-screen button and the phone will listen for something to identify. Shazam will then display information on whatever it identifies, including music or tv shows, and you can buy the song or episode right from the app.

Shazam is currently available for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone, making it a viable option for most, if not all smartphone users. You can even purchase the app for use on your Mac or Windows PC, through both the Apple store and Windows store respectively. Though there are advertisements on the free version, you can update to Shazam Encore for $5.59 to remove them if you really want to.

TrackID
TrackID, released by Sony, is another great free option that functions in much the same way that Shazam does. The main difference, though, is that TrackID displays information about the artist, like biographies and such. Otherwise, it’s more or less the same app as Shazam, but with a different interface.

TrackID is currently only available on Android devices, but it has a ton of functionality with other apps, like WhatsApp, Spotify, Facebook, and other sharing apps.

Google Voice Search
Google can search for a song that it listens to with Google Voice Search, and identify it for you. Much in the same way that Shazam and TrackID can identify music, Google Voice Search will listen for music that’s playing and search the web for what the song is. Once it has identified the song, it will display it, and if it’s available, it will offer to let you buy it from the Google Play Store.

Unfortunately, these apps only recognize the song when the actual song is playing, so doing your best to belt out Adele’s “Hello” into your smartphone won’t return any results.

As for more great tips for your mobile device solutions, you don’t need any recognition software; all you need is to subscribe to Directive’s blog.