SoundHound
Ever hear a song on the radio that you’d like to purchase later but you don’t know the name? This is no longer a problem with the SoundHound app. SoundHound is a music identification app which can be used to find the name, artist, and lyrics of just about any song. Just open the application, tap the on-screen “Tap Here” button, and hold your iPhone with the microphone facing the direction of the sound. In mere seconds, SoundHound will identify the song playing. Unlike other music recognition apps for the iPhone, SoundHound can even be used to identify songs simply by singing or humming them into the microphone. It’s perfect for indentifying those songs stuck in your head, whose names you can’t remember.
Once a song has been identified, you can even purchase the song from within the app. In addition to SoundHound’s music recognition features, the app can also find and display lyrics for the songs in your iPhone’s music library. There is also a premium version of the app but it offers little extra functionality; stick with the free version.
Pandora Radio
The Pandora Radio App is a portable version of the web-based Pandora Radio. With Pandora Radio, you can create and listen to your own personalized internet radio stations, based on your favorite music and artists, right from your iPhone. Pandora works by taking an artist or song you enter and creating custom radio stations with similar music. To further personalize your stations and help the app recognize what kind of music you like, you can rate each song either “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” If you’re already a Pandora user, you can log in to the iPhone app and access all your stations created at Pandora.com right from your phone. As with SoundHound, you can purchase the songs played on Pandora Radio from within the app. The only downside to the app is that it requires your iPhone to have an active internet connection to function.
Alarm Clock Radio
The Alarm Clock Radio app is exactly what it sounds like. It’s essentially a clock radio for your iPhone. The app displays a stylish, easy to read clock and includes access to over 25,000 free SHOUTcast powered radio stations. You can set the alarm to wake you up to one of the many available radio stations or even your own music. The app includes a snooze feature.
You can also use the app just to listen to the radio stations. The streaming radio stations will run in the background while you use other apps on your iPhone. There are currently some alarm issues with iOS4 users living in certain time zones but the developers of the app have promised an update will be released soon to correct this.
Vevo
The recently released Vevo app allows you to watch your favorite music videos on your iPhone. With this app, you can create playlists, watch and share music videos, and watch new video premieres. The app works on Wifi and also on 3G and Edge connections, at reduced quality. Like many other iPhone music apps, this app allows you to purchase the songs from your favorite music videos from the app.