On Wednesday, SoundHound Inc. introduced a complete redesign to its music discovery app with the launch of SoundHound 8. The new features — such as advanced music search, discovery, and connected streaming — provide a more tailored experience based on the user’s history.
Reminiscent of Shazam, SoundHound is specifically created to help you easily discover music playing around you. By tapping one button and having your phone to listen in for a few seconds, the app is able to identify exactly what song is playing. It will still recognize songs if you hum or sing into the app.
Aside from receiving a more streamlined look for version 8.0, any song you discover is now kept in your history. You are able to refer back to it to see where you heard a particular song as well as mark your favorite ones. Any song can be played back for free through the integrated YouTube player.
Apple Music or Spotify users also have the option to connect their accounts to SoundHound 8. You are able to build playlists using your discoveries and unlock real-time lyrics to display while the song plays.
If you are looking to expand your search discovery options when searching for what to listen to, it also curates top songs across a variety of genres. Since the app comes equipped with “OK Hound …” users are able to find go for the hands-free method and request songs, genres, or artists using voice commands.
SoundHound publicly introduced its search and assistant app — Hound — in 2016. It is similar to other digital assistants like Siri, Cortona, and Google Now, except for the fact that it claims to be faster and more accurate. But what differentiates it from other rest, is that it pushes toward a more conversational experience that feels natural when communicating with our smartphones.
If you run a search on a celebrity, the app will try and link your voice search to a music-related song or individual. But if you wanted to know more about a specific celebrity, SoundHound can provide you with age, top songs, or any other information you would like to know.
With more than 300 million global users, SoundHound is clearly seeing popularity amongst the music loving community. SoundHound 8 is available for download on both Android and iOS.
