Google Sound Search Song Recognition Widget Comes To Play Store
The official mobile clients of various cross-platform online music recognition services like Shazam and SoundHound are hugely popular for the level of ease they offer to identify and track information regarding any music you come across, be it anywhere. Inspired by the success of these tools, Google decided to incorporate one of its own within Android 4.1 Jelly Bean in the form of a neat little home screen widget. Call it a Christmas gift or Google’s decision to spread the feature to masses, the same Sound Search widget is now available in the Play Store for any device running Android 4.0 or higher. As with Shazam and SoundHound, the idea behind this widget is the same – to help users easily recognize any playing song. In addition, you can also purchase the detected songs from Google Play’s gigantic online music repository.
After you’ve installed the Sound Search widget, you may place it on your device’s home screen by navigating to the ‘Widgets’ tab within the app drawer, and then dragging the Sound Search widget to a vacant spot on your home screen. If you’re an Android 4.2 Jelly Bean or higher user, you can also place the widget on your device’s lockscreen by swiping rightwards all the way to the ‘Add Widget’ screen and then tapping the Sound Search option.
Once the widget is installed, all you need to do is tap the ‘What’s this song’ button, move your device closer to the audio source (for quicker and better recognition), and wait for the magic to work. The widget will try to recognize the track, find a relevant match in Play Music, and eventually provide you with the result. Identified tracks can then be purchased from Google Play by tapping the result displayed on the widget. Another good thing about Sound Search is its capability to maintain a log of your recently identified tracks. To launch the history list, just tap the clock button on the widget.
When put to test with almost half a dozen different tracks, the widget impressed us by quickly and correctly identifying all of them without any trouble. Alongside each track, we were presented with the relevant title, artist, album art and scan time. In case the track is available in Google Play for sale, the widget also displays its price.
Please be informed that Sound Search requires Android 4.0 or higher to run. The widget is available at Google Play Store for free, and can be downloaded via the link provided below.
Download Sound Search For Google Play For Android
Surprise! US-only. 😐
Can’t be installed in the UK
As with many initial launches by Google, this one has regional restrictions at the time of launch. We ourselves had to install it by faking US market using one of the apps that are no longer available on Play Store but can be found by a quick Google search or at XDA forums. Though you will require root access to use them.
With Google Now we can also query “what song is playing” and is able to do the same sound search.
Yes, this feature is integrated into Google Now but the purpose of this widget is to provide quick access to just this feature at one tap, right from the home screen or lock screen.