Following Apple’s acquisition of Shazam last week, rival music streaming service Deezer announced the launch of its own song recognition feature, SongCatcher.

In a statement, Deezer said SongCatcher had been in the works for many months and is already available in beta mode to a section of the service’s user base. The service uses technology from ACRCloud, a Beijing-based provider of audio recognition systems.

SongCatcher is intended to offer “greater choice for consumers” and is designed in a similar way to Shazam, with users able to identify songs or discover tracks on their smartphones by holding up the device to listen to a snippet of sound “and let the search function do the work for them”.

Apple bolstered its Apple Music streaming service with the acquisition of Shazam Entertainment in a move which stepped up the competition with rivals, including Spotify, Google and, indeed, Deezer. The acquisition means Apple will no longer have to pay Shazam commission for referals and potentially provide the company with exclusive access to Shazam’s patented audio recognition technology.

With SongCatcher, Deezer has arguably developed a better offering, if compared with Shazam in its current format.

Deezer said newly identified tracks can be added directly to playlists and the streaming service will also have the ability to play all saved and favourite tracks from SongCatcher. Shazam currently provides a link to listen or buy a track through an “external” streaming site such as Spotify, but that all could change once Apple takes control.

Alexander Holland, chief product and content officer at Deezer, said there was “clear demand from music fans to find out the name of an unknown track or artist when they are listening to music”.

He added the beta had been received positively and the full version will be rolled out in the coming months.