Identify the Song Stuck in Your Head


Let’s be honest, as intelligent geeks, we know most of the stuff in how-to’s around the web. We’re pretty much the people that write them. They’re usually designed for the less-than-tech-savvy, who find them thoroughly engaging, but often we find how-to guides yawn-worthy.

Well in one of the latest posts from How-To Geek I discovered something I didn’t know before!

The post discusses the best ways to identify a song that you’re listening to, or have listened to.

Most of us with smartphones have already heard of apps like Shazam and SoundHound, which allow you to record a snippet of song, send it to some magical place on the Internet, and solve all debates over which generic pop star sings the song that’s playing. I have used Shazam in many a club and bar and I can nod approvingly at this method identifying playing songs. It even identified a few Hindi songs which I found kinda cool.

What I found awesome were the options for if a) you don’t have a smartphone or b) the song is stuck on your head. While many of you may already be aware of these tools, I was not so enlightened and I think they’re pretty funky ones that everyone should know about.

Firstly there’s what you do if you don’t have a smartphone. Most phones do have some sort of voice recorder. Record your song, upload it to your computer, enable stereo mix (how to do it on Windows 7, I’m not really sure how on Mac… anyone know a way? I figure you can just play the song into the mic on your computer directly from your phone? I may be wrong.) then head over to, click play and you’re sweet.

You can also sing or hum into the feature at midomi, which is pretty cool. I believe you can hum into SoundHound too since, if I’m not mistaken, it is the same software as

However, not all of us are very good singers, and sometimes even awesome new technology is no good at figuring out what note we meant to sing. That’s where the next awesome bit comes in.

First, there’s the jfgi option. If you remember some (any) of the lyrics, just type them into Google followed by “lyrics”. I’ve done this countless times – it’s definitely the best way to go if you remember some of the words.

But if you really can’t remember any words – or the song is electronic and doesn’t have any words – you can hit up Wat Zat Song! This is an epic site and it makes me so excited that something like this exists! Here you can sign up, record your lovely little hum, along with some description about where you vaguely remember hearing it, and it’s put out there for the world to help you answer. It’s like a big audio forum for trying to figure out songs.

Now that is cool. I’m not sure if I’ll ever use it, but if anyone has used it, let us know about your experience!

Never leave an annoying song to bounce around in your head unlabelled ever again!

[Via How-To Geek]


4 Responses to Identify the Song Stuck in Your Head

  1. I've used Soundhound a few times, but I appreciate learning about these other tools. Anything to help me identify songs, particularly songs that I'm not listening to at that exact moment, is a good thing.

    But what I really need is a way to get a song that is stuck in my head un-stuck. I've had a song stuck in my head for the last few days… and the really annoying thing is, I've heard the song twice, so I don't even know all the verses, just the chorus (which is repeating over and over and over). And it isn't even that great of a song. I'm not trying to identify the song (I know what it is) I just want it OUT.

    • I find singing 'I'm a little teapot' gets all real music to evacuate the space between my ears. Then you have to do something else quickly in case that sticks instead…

  2. I've used Shazaam and Soundhound and in my opinion Soundhound takes the crown for song recognition. I never knew of the other sites I will have to check them out! And of course there is the google it method :)

  3. If you're going the smartphone route, SoundHound is way better than Shazam because it gives you unlimited tags for free and, since it does the humming thing that Midomi does, it's better at identifying songs through background noise. On my iPhone, I can even open SoundHound up while playing music through the iPod app and it will usually give me the lyrics (sometimes it doesn't have them, but more often than not, it does).