SoundHound's music app is getting hands-free voice commands

Since its launch in 2009, SoundHound has grown beyond a simple song recognition app — it can recognize songs you hum, create Pandora and Spotifyplaylists with the songs it recognizes, and even find and play the corresponding music videos from YouTube.

With its latest update, SoundHound is integrating hands-free voice control using Houndify, the company's natural language-understanding software.

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Houndify powers Hound, a relatively new voice assistant app like Siri or Google Now. The company says Hound has a leg up on its competitors because it's able to parse meaning from far more complex questions. (Much like Viv, the new assistant app from the founder of Siri, Hound can answer complicated, multi-part, questions.) 

Now that SoundHound, the music app, is "Houndified," you can give voice commands by tapping the new Houndify button or by saying "OK Hound." From there, SoundHound will respond to all sorts of music-related questions:

• "What's this song?"
• "Play 'Hello' by Adele"
• "Add this song to my Spotify playlist"
• "What's the most popular song in England right now?"
• "When is Paul McCartney's birthday?"

To usher in the new update, SoundHound has partnered with AWOLNATION and T-Pain to give exclusive content, including new songs and tour information, to users who try out the new speech interface.

While Houndify's speech-to-meaning platform has been in development for 10 years, the company is only just now beginning to show off uses beyond the song recognition its known for. By bringing the tech to  SoundHound, the team behind it is moving slightly closer toward its ambitious goal of "Houndifying everything" — incorporating its voice technology into more apps and everyday smart appliances.

"Anything can benefit from this type of speech interface.

The SoundHound update is available now on both  its iOS and Android apps.