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Comment by cglan | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Is it possible the microphone permission was turned off?

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.

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