Hound – the Voice Search app for Finding Music
by Paul Wilks
Apr 16, 2012 1:39 PM –
Install
Hound is a spin-off app from the hugely popular music-identification service SoundHound. Hound is essentially a voice-search tool for music. With it’s sibling SoundHound you have to play a track for it to listen to and identify. Now, with Hound simply say the name of the band, artist or song and it performs the search automatically. Ideal for music lovers, this is a great app to add to your music apps repository.
Price: Free
Tested on: HTC One X
Content Rating: Low Maturity
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Great interface!
- Fast and responsive searches!
- Accurate voice recognition!
- Easily bookmark and access saved searches!
- Easy to access to lots of artist/band information!
Cons
- Might be improved with slightly better navigation.
Features:
Hound is a companion app for SoundHound, the popular music identification app. This, I think, is pretty clear. It performs a similar task except now you can just speak the name of a song, band or artist and the app will search based on that. It couldn’t be easier. However, this blatantly obvious factoid seems to have been missed by a slew of reactionary Android users who have been quick to mark down Hound in the Google Play Store, misunderstanding the app completely and thinking it replaces SoundHound… seriously, I could not face-palm any harder without causing injury!
Whereas SoundHound listens to music, Hound listens to your voice. Simply say the name of the band or artist- even the name of a song or album and Hound will seek it out for you quickly and efficiently. It’s handy because you might hear about a band you like the sound of and want to know more. With a Google search bringing up all kinds of relevant and irrelevant information, Hound is a fast way to get the right information about a band or artist in an accurate and timely fashion.
When it identifies what you have said it will present you with its results. This might be a song, album, artist or band. If there’s some ambiguity over what you said it will provide other options. So, when testing I searched for ‘The Clash’ it provided links to both the London punk band and another band called ‘The Crash’. I have quite a eclectic taste in music and really put Hound to the test. In 9/10 cases it knew exactly what I was talking about. 
The app gives you all the typical information you could want, access to biographies, discographies, social network fan pages and even track samples. It condenses information from a wide range of places into a nice and easy-access profile, great for getting the feel of the band you were looking for. You can also bookmark items for checking out later, share discoveries and link to places like Amazon MP3 to purchase. There’s even Spotify integration which will let you listen to the full track if you have that service.
My only gripe would be navigation. It would be great to have a simpler way of access your bookmarks than the option hidden away in the menu. This dinky issue (nay, ‘preference’) aside, Hound is a cracking little app that is perfect for all music fans.
-
-
Hound – Main screen
-
-
Hound – Song search
-
-
Hound – Searching
-
-
Hound – Artist result
-
-
Hound – Artist or band bios
-
-
Hound – Artist profile
-
-
Hound – Artist profile 2
-
-
Hound – Similar artists
-
-
Hound – Buy or play tracks
-
-
Hound – Lets you explore and play samples
-
-
Hound – Lyrics
-
-
Hound – Links to Facebook fan pages
-
-
Hound – Help
Usefulness:
Music identification is great, but what if the song isn’t playing? And sure a Google search is easy to perform, even a voice search… but Hound is great at recognising what you say and brings up on relevant information about what you’re looking for. Incredibly useful for finding out about new music on the go, it’s a perfect compliment to the SoundHound app.
Ease of Use:
Simply tap it and speak. That’s all you need to do. The app is very fast, in my experience, and very accurate. I wish there was simpler access to saved searches, like a bolder tab on the front page, but this is a minor thing really.
Frequently Used:
The joy of the app is that you can use it whenever, wherever. It’s very stable and responsive so easily something you could use regularly. Need quick info on your favourite new band while with friends? This is perfect.
Interface:
Really polished and slick as you would expect. The app is ad-supported but the ads are discreet and don’t get in the way.
Tags:
Android App,
Android Apps,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
Artist,
Band,
Biography,
Discography,
Hound,
Music,
Music Identification,
SoundHound
Categorised in: Music
Submit apps for review,
promote apps, get more installs with better
app videos.