Is there any loss in that? The integrated music recognition if Google Now rarely fails me, and when it does, Shazam wasn't able to recognize the song either.

I've never had it work as fast or accurately as Shazam, especially in noisy environments. There's also no obvious way to get the full history of the songs I've searched for (there probably is - it's just not easily discoverable). I had high hopes for the automatic detection that rolled out on pixel 2s but have found that it only works on the terrible music that my gym plays.

That feature only works in the US (and maybe a few other countries?).

Are you sure about that? I know that it works in Germany. Might it be that you are confusing it with the Google Assistant song search?

Looking at my sound search history[0], I first used it in Germany in August 2014, so I'd be surprised if it wasn't rolled out worldwide by now (unless of course due to legal reasons).

[0]: https://myactivity.google.com/page?page=soundsearch

Huh, it looks like it works in my country (Sweden) now. It was unavailable for the longest time though.