There’s probably over a hundred million songs in the world and the number is certainly increasing each day. With that number of songs, the chances of you listening to a song that you really like and not knowing the title or the author is pretty high. The old school trick in identifying an unknown song is try to catch one or two sentences of the lyrics and look for it in a search engine such as Google. This method should work most of the time but definitely not for some instrumental genres such as classical, dance, electronic, jazz…
There are apps for smartphone such as SoundHound, TrackID, MusicID and Bing Audio (selected countries only) that make it so much easier to recognize unknown songs by running the app and touching a button to start recording a short clip to perform the music recognition. As for desktop computers, music recognition is also possible through these free software or online services.
MusiXmatch Music Recognizer Another application, music recognizer, song identifier for online sound recognition. MusiXmatch is one of the very useful applications when finding, recognizing a song by sound online. Unlimited music recognition! Identify original music or a singing search with the touch of a button. SoundHound is instant music and discovery. If you don't see a dialog box that says 'Welcome to Speech Recognition Voice Training,' then in the search box on the taskbar, type Control Panel, and select Control Panel in the list of results. Then select Ease of Access Speech Recognition Train your computer to understand you better. Follow the instructions to set up speech recognition.
1. midomiIf you’ve heard of the popular SoundHound app for smartphones, it actually started off from midomi, a free web based music recognition service. This is why you can find SoundHound being advertised in most parts of midomi’s website and even using their favicon!
Midomi uses flash player to activate the microphone on your computer so that it can capture the music for recognition. All you need to do is click on the button that says “Click and Sing or Hum” followed by clicking the allow button when you are prompted to give camera and microphone access to midomi. You can either sing, hum or even play the music if you’ve managed to record it and midomi will attempt to recognize the song. Fast, no frills and easy to use since there is no need to install any third party application for midomi to work other than Flash Player.
Visit midomi
2. Shazam
Shazam is a very popular music identification app for Android with nearly 2 millions reviews averaging 4.4 out of 5 stars! Fortunately you can also find a desktop version but only available to download for Windows 8.1 through the Windows Store.
It is a no brainer to use Shazam. Run the program, click on the big Shazam icon and it will start spinning to start recognizing the music coming from your microphone. Upon finding a match, Shazam will show the album cover together with links to buy the music.
Download Shazam
3. musiXmatch
The music recognition feature called “Music ID” found in musiXmatch is powered by Gracenote and if you didn’t know, Gracenote has the largest database of music and video metadata. This would mean that musiXmatch has the ability to recognize a lot of songs. The desktop version of musiXmatch is also quite similar to Shazam in the sense that it is only available for Windows 8.1 via the Windows Store.
musiXmatch primarily aims to find and match lyrics to your music tracks found on your computer. You can find the Music ID function by right clicking anywhere on the app, and select Music ID from the top menu. Then click on the microphone icon that says “TAP TO START” to start recording the music for recognition.
Download musiXmatch
4. AudioTag
Although AudioTag’s database only has nearly 2 million tracks which is nowhere comparable with Gracenote’s database that is used by musiXmatch, AudioTag has successfully helped to recognize 1.5 million queries so far. It also offers a slightly different method in recognizing music which is either through uploading a full or short fragment of audio or specifying the URL to the audio file in WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC, FLV, AMR, MP4 and many more.
AudioTag offers a great alternative to music recognition for people who do not have the permission to install third party apps like Shazam and musiXmatch, and also if they do not have a microphone.
Visit AudioTag
5. WatZatSong
If none of the apps or online services above managed to help you recognize an unknown song probably due to the low quality of the recorded music, your last option would be to record or upload the sample music and let the community of WatZatSong help you identify it.
Before you can post a sample, you must first sign up for a free account that does not require verification through email. After signing up and logging in, click on the POST A SAMPLE button located at the top of the website and you’ll given a choice of whether to record the sample using your microphone, or upload the music file. Select the genre that you think the music belongs to and also the language. Enter any comments you have about the music and click the Confirm button.
Visit WatZatSong
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ReplyBetter than Midomi in my opinion! Comes with 2 modes of search
ReplyThank you for this article. Someone else found the song for me on WatZatSong by listening to the recording I made of 1 minute. Very much appreciated.
ReplyI can tell you I finally found and bought one of my “songs” a couple of days ago after not hearing it for 24 years. It played occasionally on the radio. I did not know the author or the title, and I typically listen only to instrumental music, and the only recording was the one playing in my brain.
This particular one was “Short Stories” by Ray Obiedo, with a distinctive bass rhythm in the first half. These trendy tools like SoundHound and Shazam are absolutely worthless for locating instrumental music sans a complete database. Password for pdf mac.
Reply
Anything based on lyrics is redundant to what a Google search provides and of no value.
The real challenge is this:. You don’t know the artist, you don’t know the title, and you CERTAINLY don’t have a recording. All you have is a tune in your head… From something you heard twice on the radio 30 years ago.
Until we get there, these tools are pretty much worthless.
ReplyUntil we get there, these tools and others like them are pretty much the only chance you’ve got. It’s either slim chance or no chance if you don’t try, I’d choose the first option.
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Greg & Halgoo – if it’s only in your head – try downloading MuseScore or Finale… then write it as music…
then try to get that “identified”…
You are right, John. I’ve worked extensively in MuseScore for my own compositions and it’s probably time to do just that… Kudos on that suggestion.
Reply“From something you heard twice on the radio 30 years ago.”
The average Radio play the same bulls**t over and over and over and over.
So what you need to do think about the genre of the song (to reduce the decade it was originally played at the radio since just because it was made 30 years ago, this doenst mean the song was created at that year) and then look at the top billboard charts and the song will be there, I heard at some research paper that 2 new songs are added to the average radio stations (that play the same stuff over and over) each week so at max you have 104 songs per year and some you will discover few seconds before it start that is not what you want.
nice articel, I once found my song within only 7 second provided, then upload it on WatZatSong, and replied in a 7 minutes for an arabic song artist and title!.
ReplyThank you for providing such links. But they are not what I expected. I wish better. I thought different music have different frequency, so if they compare to the songs on their big song library, It may be nothing. I mean that will be way way simple at all. I am wondering that I hate cross plateform incompatibility these days. even Android phone or iphone sucks. What kind of tech, this is 2017. I hate….
ReplyThank you very much that helped a lot …
ReplyWow thanks to this post I discovered that musixmatch have a feature to indentify songs ♥
Replyfantastic! AudioTag did it for me to figure out one piece of music from the movie Solace: M83 – My Tears Are Becoming A Sea). Thumps up! :-)
ReplyVery useful info….thank you ray….
ReplyGoog article Ray. Do you know if there’s a search engine for very short sound clips?
Replygreat post raymond. you are the best.
Replythanks a lot
Replynice cool information
ReplyNice article I’m thankful that I’ve found it.
Identify Song By Audio
ReplyExcellent post, really needed this long time ago
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ReplyYap the kind of information I was looking for it especially for karaoke type applications. Thank you again Raymond.
ReplyThanks Ray
ReplyThanks Ray. Very useful and it really works :-)
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wow this is a nice article Ray. I sometimes find myself unable to download mp3 because I don’t know the title. This is really great for techno songs!
ReplyExcellent!
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