June 29, 2012

Google Sound Search

Android Jelly Bean comes with a Google widget that lets you find the name of a song you're listening to. Just like Shazam or SoundHound, except that the widget links to Google Play, so you can quickly buy the song if you're in the US.


The widget's name is Sound Search, but the most prominent message you're likely to see when using the widget is "What's this song?". The internal codename for the app seems to be "Google Ears".

Here's the Sound Search widget in action:


Hopefully, Google will release Sound Search as a standalone app or integrate it with Google Play Music and the Voice Search app.

Update: The widget is now in Google Play Store.

14 comments:

  1. ...a mere ten years after I suggested this to them.

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  2. SoundHound has been in the Google Play for ages, and does this very well. It can even figure out the song if I hum it.

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  3. why a google is lunching this "song search" now?
    cause now they can! it depend on the songs dataBase those uploaded by users to google music cloud storage, they can scan and reconize all songs( only available there!!!)
    you notice that I havn't name it "sound search" but "song search", because that what it is!
    for the next level: the "sound search" read this! http://imaginewnext.blogspot.com/2011/10/beyond-sound.html

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  4. Unfortunately, it's not very good yet (it failed when I tried a couple of more difficult tunes that Sounhound cracked easily), so hopefully they improve their database once people start using it, otherwise everyone will just go back to sounhounds and shazams that do the job better...

    Also, the reason they do it now is purely monetization related, seeing how the app is frozen (meaning disabled and not showing in the all app list) by default on my device (I had to defrost it with Titanium Backup, but non rooted users won't be able to do that), once it detected I'm not from a country they sell their music to, which is a shame.

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  5. I think this was available as an app in sony ericsson xperia phones previously.. (also available for download from Google play)
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sonyericsson.trackid&hl=en

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  6. El portal de Google esta equipado con la mayor Estructura dimensional
    Que permite al usuario estar Informado en es sistema de la web site ya que es muy diverso.

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  7. The native Bing app for Windows Phone 7 has had this functionality since the revamped OS was released. It works much better than SoundHound. It does really well with IDs on radio stations with heavy static as well. Song ID & the text/code scanner are the only really useful parts of the Bing app since Bing web search is so inferior to Google.

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  8. Since you are going to integrate song search into Android be smart about it and offer the user to either purchase it from the play store or play/watch on youtube.

    Just my 2 cents...

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  9. Thank you so much for sharing the song search link. We shall look forward for the progress of it. Hope it works out wonders for you.

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  10. The tool is useful! thanks for share!

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  11. Not entirely sure that this is as innovational as proclaimed. Surely the vast majority of people listening to a song on a phone, they would know what it was. How many times do you listen to some music without having reference to what it actually is?

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  12. really just another soundhound if outside the US..

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  13. widget's too big and not as good as soundhound.

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