YouTube Music for Android has introduced a new feature that lets users search for the songs stuck in their heads by just humming. The feature was already present in other Google apps such as Search and YouTube, and even Pixel smartphones, enabling users to search for songs and find them using machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). It has now made its way to the YouTube Music app, opening up new ways to identify the songs playing on the radio or at the mall.
YouTube Music Gets New AI Search Feature
The Hum to Search feature was spotted in YouTube Music for Android app version 7.02. It is present in the app represented by a new waveform icon at the top-right corner of the screen, adjacent to the microphone icon. Tapping the icon opens up a new vibrant page that says, “Play sing, or hum a song”. Upon the successful completion of the search query, it shows details such as the song, artist, year, album and artwork. Below them, you get options to either ‘Play’ or ‘Save’ the song.
YouTube Music’s new search feature
According to a 9to5Google report, it uses AI “to match the sound to the original recording”. Since it is a Google feature, it reportedly works similarly to the Hum to Search feature on the Google Search app. This feature, introduced in 2020, allows users to hum songs to search for them in over 20 languages on both Android and iOS devices. Google says it doesn’t require having a perfect pitch as a song’s melody is its “unique identity”, and it converts it into a number-based sequence to identify it and find matches.
The report further suggests that Google started testing this feature on YouTube Music in March 2024 but it did not make its way to the public until now. We tried to access this feature and it works as advertised. If you haven’t received the same on your device, it might take a couple of days till it is widely available since the tech giant rolls out its feature in a gradual manner.
