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Music streaming service Spotify has partnered with SoundHound, a company that makes music recognition and discovery software for mobile devices. SoundHound users who use the company's Android or iOS app to discover new songs will soon be given the option to stream the song from Spotify instantly.

Much like its main competitor Shazam, SoundHound "listens" to a song that's playing and then checks the audio sample against a large database of music to determine what the song is called and who it's by. It can even determine the name of a song based on users humming or singing it into the app, although the accuracy of the results can vary.

The music identification app Shazam was one of the first must-have apps for the iPhone. Today, the company released one of the biggest updates in the app's history. Shazam for iPhone and iPod touch now sports an updated interface and support for fast-app switching in iOS4. The app now also features a new focus on music discovery outside of tagging. The new "Shazam Charts" highlight the most often tagged songs from 20 countries. Most importantly, though, the app now features an option that starts the music tagging feature immediately after opening the app without the need to click a single button.

Although a majority of folks might still rely on traditional means such as the radio to discover new music, the competition is constantly heating up in the online music discovery realm, with services like Pandora, The Hype Machine and Last.fm always looking to recommend that next song or artist.

Today, YouTube is getting into the music recommendation and discovery game with an update to its music page.

Rhapsody, the online streaming music service, just launched its iPhone and iPod touch app (iTunes link). While there had been some discussion about whether Apple would actually allow this 'iTunes competitor' on the iPhone, the approval process looks to have been relatively smooth for Rhapsody. The app feels very similar to Apple's own iPod app. From within the app, you can search Rhapsody's library of 8 million tracks, surf genres, create playlists, or find new music released this week. Overall, we came away quite impressed after testing the app out for a while, though the $14.99/month subscription fee (after a free 7-day trial) will surely keep some potential users away.

imeem, which describes itself as the "world's largest social music service," just told its community members that it plans to delete all photos and videos that users have uploaded to their profiles and groups on Jun 30th. imeem argues that it is doing this in order to simplify the service and focus on the service's core social music features. According to imeem, user-generated photos and videos weren't very popular on the site and cost a lot to host and stream. In a comment that sounds similar to what we've been hearing from other social media sites, imeem also argues that "there's no ROI for us in UGV," as advertisers just aren't very interested in seeing their content next to amateur videos.

Livekick is a startup for the would-be concert-goers among us.

We're busy. We don't have time to troll a half dozen websites for bands we like at venues that are nearby with showtimes that are convenient from ticket outlets that give us a good deal - there are far too many moving parts involved in that equation. As a result, even though we're huge music fans and/or love going out, we rarely get to see good, live music. Fortunately, from now on, Livekick can help us. Read on for a video interview with the founders and a thorough product demo.

We have seen our fair share of doom and gloom this year, but, according to a report from Bloomberg.com, at least Pandora, the free online music discovery service, expects to be profitable next year. Pandora was founded in in 2000, and derives its revenue from targeted audio advertising in its music streams and affiliate sales through Amazon's MP3 store and iTunes. In the interview with Bloomberg, Pandora's founder Tim Westergreen also disclosed that the service is currently adding about 50,000 new users a day, and that the service's successful iPhone app is responsible for bringing in about 20,000 of these new users.