During RAIN Summit West in Las Vegas, I found myself on a balcony overlooking Caesar’s, sharing drinks with Cheryl Lucanegro, VP of Sales at SoundHound (formerly with Pandora), and talking about her app.
SoundHound shares market leadership of the music-identification space with Shazam. Each has been downloaded many millions of times, and they are playing increasingly important roles in music discovery and streaming playlists. The two apps share some basic functions and partnerships, with important differences. Naturally, the conversation with Cheryl Lucanegro focused on evangelizing SoundHound’s advantages.
One unique SoundHound feature is singing or humming into the app to identify a song. I have tried this with astounding success, both humming and singing. I invited Cheryl Lucanegro to demonstrate it, and she gamely crooned “Happy Birthday” into my phone. Even in a noisy, semi-outdoor environment, it worked charmingly.
“SoundHound does recognize a good percentage of them,” she told me. “If you sing a song into SoundHound, and it gets it, you become a fan. There is excitement and joy.
Leaning In
SoundHound and other apps like it satisfy the ultimate lean-in moments. I keep music-ID apps at the ready when I’m listening to non-interactive streams such as Pandora or any other pureplay station. I smack the ID button for any track I want to hear again; both Shazam and SoundHound a record of the capture, and enable exporting the song to on-demand music services. SoundHound has a setting that automatically puts ID’d songs into a Spotify playlist for future listening — a particularly potent feature for music collectors in the age of streaming.
“There’s no bad news in a SoundHound moment.”
“When you find a song, it’s not like hearing it on the radio or Pandora,” Lucanegro told me. “You hear something and go, ‘What is that?’ You’re highly engaged. You’re definitely a lean-in person at that point. You’re not spending hours with us, but the moments you do spend are crucial, and can deliver joy. There’s no bad news in a SoundHound moment.”
Sponsored SoundHounding
On the business development side Lucanegro was keen to describe her partnership with WestwoodOne sports programming. It works when a listener “SoundHounds” during a sportcast, and is taken to a custom landing page of relevant info, sponsored by the advertiser. In this deal, SoundHound is the technology provider for a unique type of direct-response advertising. Geico has been an advertising partner.
“The question is, how does the user connect with a brand instantly? As you’re listening to the sports program, the sportscaster announces a promotion during the game, plus an instruction to ‘SoundHound’ the game anytime during the program. Users get the game-related content, plus Geico’s offers. It’s trackable for the advertiser.”
Maps and Love
During our conversation, there was also a good deal of evangelizing the mapping feature, which shows who has identified what, where. First we watched Chery Lucanegro’s icon pop onto the map, exactly at our spot in Vegas, after she sang “Happy Birthday.” Then she told me of traveling to Peru and finding all kinds of new music based on the app activity of Peruvian users.
Shazam has a map, too, but there, as with other features, I received explanations of SoundHound superiority. Do people make an emotional connection to her app? According to Cheryl Lucanegro: “People say, ‘I use Shazam. I love SoundHound.'”