Search For Music – And Maybe More – With Your Voice

By

20110527-hound.jpg

Say hello to Hound, a new free app from the people at SoundHound. What’s it for? It’s a voice search app for music and musicians. But it aspires to greater things.

This launch version is limited to music, but the makers of Hound say they intend it to become an all-purpose search tool, powered by voice commands rather than typed text.

They’re even trying to make “Hound” into a verb from the get-go, suggesting that people hound for stuff in much the same way as they google it.

The official press release says “subsequent versions of Hound will include expanded voice-search categories for a variety of everyday tasks” – so when I asked the Hound people what that actually means, they told me: “It will be beyond music. The specific “expanded categories” have not been announced.”

Right. OK. So what does Hound do right now? Say the name of a band, song or album, and it will find relevant information for you. Your search results will give you links to iTunes, so you can buy music straight away, as well as song lyrics and videos from YouTube.

As it stands, it’s quite a niche product. There’s only so many people who care that much about music that they want a dedicated voice search app for it. But who knows what Hound has coming next? It’ll be interesting to see what else it has to offer as time goes on, and whether voice-powered searching catches on among the masses. We shall see.

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.