Music streaming platform Deezer has announced that its SongCatcher is now available for all users of the Android operating system. The functionality was first made available as a beta feature back in December, utilizing the technology offered by automatic content recognition platform ACRCloud that allows the app to recognize songs that are playing in the background and identify them by cross-referencing recorded samples with its library of some 53 million tracks. The app also provides users with the option to add any identified songs either to their playlists or favorites lists.
There are two ways for users to access the SongCatcher feature; one of them is the search bar function inside the Deezer app which can ask you whether you want to “identify the sound.” The second alternative is long-pressing Deezer’s app icon on the handset’s home screen and then selecting the “audio search” shortcut. The latter option is only available to devices that run Android 7.1.2 Nougat or newer as app shortcuts aren’t supported by older OS builds. This feature is currently available to both freemium and paying subscribers of the music streaming platform. However, non-paying subscribers can only listen to saved songs in shuffle mode, while paying subscribers can listen to their saved songs in any order that they wish.
The SongCatcher feature adds to the list of functionalities that the music platform offers to its subscribers. The streaming service has already added support for both Amazon Alexa and Google Home, allowing users who own virtual assistant devices to play their favorite music via voice commands. For example, users can instruct the Google Assistant to continuously play their personalized music playlist, which Deezer refers to as the Flow soundtrack. Amazon Alexa, on the other hand, can recognize 18 different moods and at least 74 different music genres, allowing users to ask it to play a specific type of music.