mildly impressed by shazam (and soundhound)

I’m a late adopter of Shazam, which is a semi-magic music recognition service. I just gave it a ten song shuffle from my collection.

Shazam matched:

  • LLL — Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter
  • Puppet Master — Marissa Nadler
  • He Woke Me Up Again — Sufjan Stevens
  • At The Bottom Of Everything — Bright Eyes
  • Derelict — Beck

Shazam found no match for:

Shazam was completely wrong about:

So: 50% hit rate, 50% miss — and one false positive. Adequate.

Karl recommended I try SoundHound. It matched:

  • LLL — Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter
  • He Woke Me Up Again — Sufjan Stevens
  • Religious Songs — Withered Hand
  • Caney Fork River — Old Man Luedecke
  • At The Bottom Of Everything — Bright Eyes
  • Derelict — Beck

Soundhound didn’t match:

  • Puppet Master — Marissa Nadler
  • Reuben — Rafe Stefanini
  • Appetite — Mount Eerie
  • Setting Forth — Flashman

So it knew about Withered Hand and Old Man Luedecke, but didn’t know about Marissa. About the same; maybe slightly better.

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