Can’t remember the song? Just hum to YouTube to find it. Taking cue from popular music recognition apps like Apple’s Shazam and Google’s own voice assistant, YouTube is now testing a new feature that will help music lovers find their favourite tunes with just a hum.
The Hum to search feature is currently being tested with a small percentage of viewers to start and only on Android. However, it is expected to roll out to more users in the coming months.
“We’re experimenting with the ability for folks to search for a song on YouTube by humming or recording a song that’s currently being played,” YouTube said.
To use the feature, you can toggle from YouTube voice search to the new song search feature, and hum or record the song you’re searching for. Make sure that the voice note should be at least 3 seconds or more.
Once the song is identified by YouTube using AI, it will show you relevant official music content, user- generated videos, and/or Shorts featuring the searched song in the YouTube app.
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YouTube’s hum to search feature is similar to the Shazam app which is widely used to search song by listening to a short clip. It identifies songs using an audio fingerprint based on a time-frequency graph known as spectrogram.
Google also introduced a similar feature in 2020. It allows you to search for a music using a hum or a whistle. It requires you to hum your song for 10-15 seconds to the Google Assistant. It supports more than 20 languages currently.
Google explains that it uses machine learning algorithm to identify potential song matches. Song’s tune is like its fingerprint, each have their own unique identity. Google uses machine learning models transform the audio into a number-based sequence representing the song’s melody. These ML models are trained to identify songs based on a variety of sources, including humans singing, whistling or humming, as well as studio recordings. These sequences are then compared to thousands of songs from around the world and identify potential matches in real time. YouTube’s latest feature is likely to use the same method to search for songs. So next time you’re stuck in a musical rut, just hum to YouTube. You might just find your favourite song!
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