Rhapsody is taking on music-recognition services like Shazam with a new app that lets users discover music with one click.
Rhapsody SongMatch, launched yesterday, listens to the song playing in the background, on the TV, in the car, or wherever and identifies the name of the track, artist, and album. The app also shows information about the artist, including top tracks, full albums, bios, and similar artists.
SongMatch is only available right now for Android devices, but Rhapsody said it will launch the service on other platforms "in the future." Android users can download SongMatch for free from Google Play or the Amazon Appstore.
SongMatch is free for anyone to use for song-matching, though Rhapsody subscribers will have the added benefit of being able to listen to and download full tracks of matched songs. In addition, all matched songs are automatically stored and saved to a user's Rhapsody account in a playlist for future access. Those who are not Rhapsody members can start a free 14-day trial from the app.
"Our customers are music lovers who tell us they use a variety of mobile apps to solve their listening needs and discover new music," Paul Springer, senior vice president of worldwide product and design at Rhapsody, said in a statement. "But [users] get frustrated with advertisements and the lack of full playback," he added, referring to competing services.
"We built Rhapsody SongMatch to seamlessly integrate with our core experience to connect the fun and convenience of mobile apps with full on-demand playback for both subscribers and new customers," Springer said.
Rhapsody partnered with metadata company Gracenote for the music-recognition feature of SongMatch. Gracenote's technology works by listening to a few seconds of a song and matching the audio with the company's database.
Rhapsody said the app kicks off its mobile utility apps strategy. The company is planning to add other free music apps to its lineup.
Meanwhile, rival Shazam has been shifting its service from music discover to what Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher calls "media discovery." For more on that, check out PCMag's recent interview with Fisher.
For more from Angela, follow her on Twitter @amoscaritolo.
Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412934,00.asp?kc=PCRSS05039TX1K0000759
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