Rhapsody is taking on Shazam’s music recognition model with a little twist.

Seattle-based Rhapsody recently launched SongMatch, an Android app that mimics Shazam and allows users to identify music in seconds. But unlike Shazam, users can listen to and download songs provided that they have Rhapsody’s existing $9.99/month or $14.99/month plans.

It’s an interesting way to get people to use Rhapsody’s music service and as the blog post notes, isn’t the first of the company’s efforts to develop purpose-built music apps.

“SongMatch is a great way to introduce new music fans to Rhapsody,” Rhapsody’s Paul Springer wrote. “We’ll continue to focus on using over a decade’s worth of experience to solve customer challenges in discovering and playing the right music, right now.“

Rhapsody joined forces with Gracenote to help with the recognition technology.

In December of last year, Rhapsody said it had topped 1 million subscribers for the first time in its history, leveraging its MetroPCS partnership and its acquisition of the Napster music service from Best Buy.

Rhapsody is an independent, privately held company, based in downtown Seattle, following its 2010 spinoff from RealNetworks. However, RealNetworks retains a large stake in Rhapsody and reports Rhapsody’s financial results as part of its quarterly regulatory filings.

Previously on GeekWire: More music in your living room: Rhapsody debuts Xbox app

 

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