Deezer SongCatcher Is Like Shazam, But Better

Earlier this week, Apple announced its intention to acquire Shazam. As some of you already know, Shazam is an app that allows you to identify songs you hear on the radio and in commercials by having it listen to the content in question. It seems like a pretty safe bet that we'll see Apple integrate Shazam into Siri and Apple Music, but today, Deezer is beating it to the punch.Deezer has announced a new feature called SongCatcher. Like Shazam, SongCatcher will identify music that's currently playing, but in some ways, it could prove to be better. SongCatcher, which Deezer notes is proprietary technology powered by ACRCloud, will not only identify music, but you'll also have the ability to add those songs to your favorites or a playlist directly from your search results.

Your music query is carried out by a new SoundCapture search feature within the Deezer app. Deezer noted today that the feature has been beta testing with certain users for a while now, and that the test has proven to be "very positive." To hear Deezer describe it, it sounds like SongCatcher works pretty well.

The ability to add songs to a playlist and play them back later is what separates Deezer SongCatcher from the rest. While current implementations of Shazam will identify music for you and give you a link to buy the track or listen to the track through Spotify, Deezer removes a step from that. With SongCatcher, you can simply add the song to a playlist to hold onto it for when you're ready to listen, never having to leave the app to add the song to your library.

SongCatcher isn't rolling out to all Deezer users, as it'll be available only to Premium+ subscribers. It's going to take a little while for that roll out to be complete too, as the launch begins today with Android and won't be complete until the feature lands on iOS sometime next year.