SoundHound, formerly Midomi, is mainly for identifying songs that aren't actually playing and you are humming the tune. Shazam is top-notch for holding up to a song playing and identifying it. I'd go with Shazam.
i went with sound hound because at that time shazam was screwing with everyone going from free to charging.. was a confusing time.. i have had zero problem with soundhound.. chris.
I use both. They reference different databases. One might recognize a song that the other does not. In my experience, SoundHound is better than Shazam at recognizing non english songs.
Originally Shazam was better, but SoundHound has leap frogged it in every category. It's better at sampling from the radio and even works with live performances or just humming. It also provides a ton of information about the song including lyrics, videos, recommendations and even links to Pandora and iTunes.
I use both. There have been quit a bit of times Soundhound didn't recognize the song, but Shazam would, and sometimes Soundhound found it when Shazam didn't. I really only use this apps to find the name and artist of songs, then go to my MacBook and download it there. I'm very neutral when it comes to these 2 apps. Would be nice if there was an app that was able to check the databases both apps use and maybe use it's own, but right now, neither app is better than the other from my experiences.
I originally had Shazam also and it was great but once they decided to start charging I told them to screw themselves and bought SoundHound. I never had many issues. Even with foreign music. Here is my experience Korean = Sucks. It does not reconize anything Japanese = Alright. It gets most but not all. Throw a lesser known artist/song at it and you will get nothing. Russian = My collection is not that big for it but it reconizes it good. French = Same as above but it has not clue what it is listening too. I decided to throw some industrial and electronic at it and it pretty much nailed them all but it does confuse different versions. I found it hilarious it confused Still Alive for the game Portals ending with Jonathan Coulton - Still Alive. They sound nothing alike besides the beat and lyrics. I need to test Shazam on Korean because it is annoying it does not reconize any of it.
Shazam never screwed their users. They actually care about their users because everyone who had the app before it went to 5 tags per month doesn't have this limitation.
