[vegabook]

Recently found Shazam is less accurate - somehow soundhound is giving me better results. On Shazam I'm getting a lot of results from Asian musical traditions which is great, if it wasn't the wrong song. Maybe they need to improve the algo if they've increased the range of music they will select from? Seems now there's a lot more hash table collision[1].

  [1] https://github.com/cgzirim/not-shazam?tab=readme-ov-file#resources--card_file_box

[cglan]

Soundhound has always been better than Shazam. It can even pick up people singing and extremely quiet songs

[bsder]

Shazam seems to have a way bigger database than Soundhound.

For a while, it seems like Soundhound was about to shut down. It wouldn't match anything released in the last 12-18 months, but that seems to be fixed.

[jedberg]

In my sample of one song, I have to disagree. I played Watermelon by Mezerg, which is admittedly not very popular, and Soundhound couldn't get it with two tries, but Shazam picked it up in less than two seconds.

[robbomacrae]

I work at SoundHound. If it didn't get it in two tries it's likely we didn't have that song in the database. Both Shazam and SH have knowledge gaps.

[IndySun]

I've championed Soundhound but it has literally stopped working (finding any tune) on my iphone. I've reinstalled, still nothing. It does not appear to 'hear' anything.

[RockRobotRock]

Is it possible the microphone permission was turned off?

[IndySun]

It's a fair question. Out of an abundance of caution I just toggled it. Definitely on. In fact, in doing so I have today noticed some correlation between swapping between Shazam and Soundhound and mic behaviour. That is to say, Shazam appears to hog the mic and not relinquish it to Soundhound upon request. If all apps are quit, then I launch Soundhound, I can get a response. But if I happen to then use Shazam, which always works, Soundhound fails until I do the double quit.

[lucgommans]

I compared Shazam's, SoundHound's, and BeatFind's recognition library in August 2021. (And tried MusixMatch but it crashed on startup apparently.) Don't think I published it anywhere, these are my raw notes I found among saved chat messages. The format is starting to make more sense now that I'm putting it into a wider window than a chat screen, so I can recommend using a wide browser (94 characters per line should do it). Eyeing the song choices, it looks like I tried to find different genres and artist types (ccMixer/youtube celebrities, to indie, to established) but a larger sample size would obviously have been even better. Still, I hope it's one step up from adding another random opinion!

The conclusion appears to be that BeatFind and Shazam know the most songs, but are also somewhat complementary and all of the services had at least one song they uniquely recognised.

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    Fun facts:
     * Night Driver (W) said "1 Shazams". I think I was the first person to ever Shazam that. Some of the most obscure things had hundreds, often thousands of shazams!
     * You know where they are taking the hobbits but none of the services do!

    ========

    - ABC = found the song
    - # = number of attempts
    - f = exceptionally fast matching (when it did match, might not be first attempt)
    - ~ = knew one of the songs

    BeatFind:     2B  C     1E    2G 2H  1I  2Jf 2Lf 4M 2Nf 2Of 1Pf 1Rf ~S 2T  1Uf 1Vf 1W 1Xf Y Z
    SoundHound: A 1B        1E 2F 1G 2H  2If     1L         2O  3P  2R     1Tf 2U
    Shazam:       1Bf    1D 1E 1F 1G 1Hf 1I  2J  1L  1M 4N  1O  1Pf 1Rf    1Tf 1Uf 1V  2W 1X  Y Z
    MusixMatch: crashes on startup, presumably it realizes it won't be able to show me ads

    missingno
    Shazam:     A C K Q S
    SoundHound: C D F J K M/N Q S V W X Y Z
    BeatFind:   A D F K Q

    non-universal finds (repeated letter = unique = counts double; slash means same artist so should be counted as one)
    Shazam:     DD F J M/N V X Y Z
    SoundHound: AA F
    BeatFind:   CC J M/N S V X Y Z

    A: Levan Polkka Epic Orchestral Cover version
    B: Pokémon red/blue soundtrack
    C: Mayhem (various songs, it seems either they have all or they have none)
    D: Art Now ft. Snowflake
    E: Hero's Choice
    F: Three Days Grace - Scared
    G: Syrian - Supernova
    H: The Explosion - Here I Am
    I: The Von Bondies - C'mon C'mon
    J: Frank Klepacki - Scouting (C&C TibSun)
    K: Conspiracy - Chaos Theory (demoscene)
    L: Cheshyre - Madness6 (remix) (Newgrounds ID 77998)
    M: Dimrain47 - Twilight Techno
    N: Dimrain47 - Cloud Control
    O: DragonForce - My Spirit Will Go On
    P: Yuki Kajiura - The First Town (SAO)
    Q: THEY'RE TAKING THE HOBBITS TO ISENGARD! THE HOBBITS- THE HOBBITS- TO ISENGARD! TO ISENGARD!
    R: Faithless - Insomnia
    S: Age of Empires 1 soundtrack
    T: Moulin Rouge - El Tango De Roxanne
    U: Van Canto - Master of Puppets
    V: Slack Bird - Jouni
    W: Floppytronic - Night Driver
    X: EgoSalad / Kitboga - Breathe in
    Y: Floppy Drive music: top 4 hits on yt: sweet dreams, imperial march, ghostbusters, beat it. Only ghostbusters was known to any
    Z: Obsidian Shell - Orphanage

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Note that what I did not test/review introducing noise (like people talking through it) or filtering (like when you hear the music through a wall)