Don’t forget the app: What’s that song?

When I hear a new song on the radio that I like, I want to know the title and artist. More often than not, the D.J. does not tell me this, and I have to try to find out this information on my own.

I used to try to rely on the radio station’s website by looking through their list of last songs played, but more often than not, that was not up to date. So I got in the habit of writing down a main lyric or two—when I was safely stopped at the next traffic light—so that when I got home, I could search online.

This works well since there are so many websites that post the song lyrics—you sometimes don’t even have to have the lyrics exact for it to pull up a match. And if it’s an artist you’re unfamiliar with, you can then use YouTube to play the song to be sure you found the correct one.

However, there is a better solution, but the timing does have to be right so that you can do this safely. Do not do this while driving—you need to wait until you are safely stopped. Or if you have someone else riding in the car with you, have that person do it for you.

SoundHound App

Download the SoundHound app—it really is incredible. All you have to do is tap on the screen while the song is playing and within about 5 seconds, it will return the song title and name of the artist.

That is incredible enough, but it also displays the lyrics, and get this, they scroll along in time with the song so that you can read as you are listening. How does it do that?

That information alone is great, but you can also learn the album name(s) that the song was on, the year released, and you can click on the YouTube button to find the song there, too. If you click on the artist’s name, you can learn additional information, including seeing their social media affiliations, tour dates, other albums, and clips of other songs. There is even an option to buy the song from Amazon.

If you are unable to use SoundHound while the song is playing, you can also attempt to sing the song yourself and see if it will find it. I have only tried that twice. With one song, it just wouldn’t find it—maybe it’s my singing that threw it off :-/ or maybe it was that it was such an obscure group that hadn’t had any hits—yeah, that must have been it. The other song I tried singing was a very popular song, and it found it very quickly.

I like the history tab, too. This makes it easy to go back and refresh my memory about songs that I have previously looked up and liked.

I highly recommend downloading this app. You’ll have a lot of fun using it, but remember, be safe about it.

Question: Have you tried singing a song for SoundHound to find for you?
Leave a comment below and let me know.