‘Hum a Song’ Search Hits YouTube Music

Photo Credit: YouTube

After adding the ability to identify what’s playing in the background on Google Search and YouTube, YouTube Music is finally rolling out ‘hum to search’ functionality.Since October, YouTube has offered a host of new features on its mobile Android app, such as a “hum to search” capability, something that has long been available on Google Search. Now that functionality is finally rolling out to YouTube Music users.

Using AI “to match the sound to the original recording,” you can hum, sing, or play a snippet of a song to search for a track. To use the feature, there’s a dedicated button found next to the voice search icon when you bring up the search bar.

Unfortunately, unlike Spotify, where a list of your searches is saved to a playlist, YouTube just takes you to search results for the song it identified. This is much like the Google Search version of the feature, which shows potential matches by percentage — a neat detail that Spotify doesn’t offer.

While such functionality makes sense for something like YouTube Music, it’s strange that this wasn’t offered ages ago, especially given that Google Play Music — the company’s former music streaming offering that was eventually gutted and rebuilt to become YouTube Music — used to offer such a feature in a prevalent “identify what’s playing” button.Outside of YouTube and YouTube Music, owners of Google Pixel devices have long been able to make use of a “hum to search” functionality through their Google Assistant and the Now Playing app, as well as Google Search.

With over 100 million subscribers on its YouTube Music and Premium tiers, adding better search functionality can only enhance the overall user experience; being able to use the same features across apps within the Google/YouTube suite is something Android users welcome. The feature is rolling out gradually to YouTube Music users on Android devices, with eventual availability on iOS devices as well.