First, the Shazam (download for Android and iOS) app revolutionized music discovery by allowing users to quickly detect a song's name, artist and lyrics just by launching the app and holding up their phone to the music.

The WhoSampled app (download for Android and iOS) is "three-upping" Shazam with the ability for users to see what the company calls a song's "entire DNA" -- every sample, cover and remix associated with it.

Whereas Shazam lets users hear the song they've identified through Apple Music (download for Android or iOS) or Spotify (download for Android or iOS), WhoSampled lets them listen to those, as well as to the original songs that they sample and the ensuing covers and remixes from their preferred music streaming app.

"We had always dreamed of adding these features from the moment we launched the app six years ago," explains WhoSampled's co-founder and CEO Nadav Poraz. "You can identify the song playing around you, then dig deeper and find out what other song was sampled in the song you're hearing."

This is all thanks to WhoSampled's crowdsourced online database, which, over the years, has amassed and vetted a tremendous amount of data on samples, remixes and covers, from passionate music fans.

Co-founded by Poraz, a software developer whose love of old-school hip hop turned into an appreciation for all the amazing R&B, funk and soul samples that permeated it, WhoSampled was once just an online database, featuring 200 entries. It now contains over 540, 000 songs across every major genre from over 180,000 artists added by more than 20,000 devoted contributors.

So next time you're listening to a song and wondering where that riff or chorus came from, rest assured that it's probably in WhoSampled's database and easily discoverable through the companion app. You can even have WhoSampled scan your local music library and tell you if and how individual songs are connected.

"Other music recognition apps will tell you the name of the song you're hearing," said Poraz. "But WhoSampled is the only app that will allow you to understand the origins of the composition and reveal the other recordings that sampled it."

The WhoSampled app for iOS costs $3.99. The ad-supported version of the Android app is free. Users can use the music recognition feature in a limited capacity at no additional charge or perform unlimited searches for a $9.99 annual subscription on both iPhone and Android.

Takeaways
The WhoSampled app allows users to see what the company calls a song's "entire DNA" -- every sample, cover and remix associated with it.
This is all thanks to WhoSampled's online database, which contains over 540, 000 songs across every major genre from over 180,000 artists added by more than 20,000 devoted contributors.