Is Sing Something as popular as Draw Something?

If you are fond of drawing, play ‘Draw Something’ and doodle away. But if you’re into singing, or at least just wanting to belt out even if you don’t have the right tunes, download the newest game in town called ‘Sing Something’ – yes, playing mobile games has gotten melodic, loud, and vocal.

While the title and the type of application are almost similar, ‘Draw Something’ is by OMGPOP while ‘Sing Something’ is developed by Cuteko. If you’re still a bit clueless, ‘Sing Something’ is very similar to ‘Draw Something’ in several ways. The difference lies on the activity, which is, instead of drawing, you need to sing a phrase of a song and get your friend to guess the song title and its artist.

To use the app, simply sign in using your email or Facebook account, pick a competitor from among your contacts, choose a song, record a clip, and then hit send. Playing the ‘Sing Something’ game may be challenging if you are not that familiar with multiple music genres. It doesn’t give the lyrics of the song as you sing your way through it, but it does provide a Youtube link for possible reference.

Once a friend sends you a song, you need to guess what hit your friend likely belted out by selecting letters from a virtual keyboard of the entire alphabet in order to solve the puzzle. Using the hangman style, you need to fill in the blanks of both the song and the artist.

Having similarity with ‘Draw Something’ again, you and your friend earn coins upon the correct guess of the title and artist. In addition, you can also use up the bombs as your “help line” to get a different song or eliminate some of the available letters to make the guessing easier.

At present, there are over 1000 songs in the library of the ‘Sing Something’ app, which mostly came from the programmers’ favorites as well as Youtube hits. Vlado Hrincar, one of the developers of the app said, “Currently we have four categories (80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010-2012), covering the overall history of the modern music. We are planning to add at least 10 more categories, focusing on specific genres or artists — Madonna, Jackson, and yes, Justin Bieber too and Rebecca Black if we’re really evil.”

The recent finale of “American Idol” and the rise of other singing competitions like “X Factor” and “The Voice” will surely have an influence in attracting gamers to use the app. Unlike ‘Draw Something’ that can be played in silence, this app is both a good and bad one. Good, because great singers might get discovered (who knows?); and bad, since other commuters might get angry when hearing you or your friend’s out-of-tune melodies.

The app can be downloaded from Apple’s iTunes for free, but requires iOS 5 to function. Will ‘Sing Something’ receive the same fire as that of ‘Draw Something’? Let me know what you think via @GlennOng on Twitter.

This article is my 64^th contribution to Manila Bulletin -- one of the Philippines' leading broadsheets -- published on June 18, 2012 (Monday) in the TechNews Section. You can view the PDF version here (lower left portion).