SoundHound vs. Shazam, (sort of) scientifically tested

[captpackrat]

I installed the latest versions of Shazam Encore and SoundHound Infinity on a Motorola Xoom.  I then selected 50 songs with varying degrees of obscurity, played them back one at a time and asked each app to identify it.  I tried to use the same segment of the song for each app, usually the very beginning.  If it couldn't identify the song from the

Comments

[nipper]

So, what was your conclusion? Which would you recommend and which do you use?

[captpackrat]

They were close enough it would be hard for me to make a recommendation. If you can tolerate mistakes, SoundHound seemed to a better job at the really obscure stuff and most of the time it was several seconds faster. SoundHound also claims you can hum or sing a song to identify it, something I didn't test. And it handles tablets slightly better (it can run in portrait or landscape, Shazam is locked to portrait).

On the other hand, Shazam is about half the size, important if your storage is limited.