YouTube Music’s new Sound Search feature lets you find songs by humming, singing, or playing a snippet.
Simply tap the waveform icon in the app, perform your best rendition, and the AI will instantly suggest matches.
Building on Google’s Now Playing feature, this innovative tool will change the way you discover music, making it easier to find that catchy tune that’s stuck in your head.
Was that a long read? Let me explain it more simply…
Next article This feature is available on both iOS and Android
What is the story
YouTube Music is broadly rolling out its “Sound Search” feature for both Android and iOS users. This innovative tool allows users to identify and find songs by humming, singing, or playing part of a melody. The feature uses AI technology to match the input sound against an extensive catalog of music. After being made more widely available for a short period in May, it was initially rolled back, but is now available again in version 7.10 and a server-side update announced earlier this week.
How to access new features
To utilize the Sound Search feature, users need to tap on the magnifying glass icon in the top right corner of the YouTube Music app. A new waveform icon will appear next to the microphone. Tapping on this waveform icon will launch Sound Search, where you can hum, sing or play a snippet of a song and YouTube Music’s AI will analyze it and provide you with a list of possible matches. The identification process is reported to be very fast.
Results and recommendations for better use
When you enable the Sound Search feature, a full-screen results page displays cover art, song title, album, artist, year, and even download/offline status. There are also shortcuts to options to play or save to a playlist. A standard overflow menu is available for other features. For best results with Sound Search, we recommend humming or singing as accurately as possible and providing a lengthy audio sample. If you don’t know the melody, it may help to hum a recognizable part of the song.
A new era of music discovery?
The introduction of Sound Search on YouTube Music is transforming the way people discover and enjoy music. The new feature aims to significantly improve the user experience by making it easier than ever to find your favorite, hard-to-find songs. Sound Search builds on Google’s Now Playing feature, which was introduced for Google Search in 2020 and then added to the YouTube app in October 2023.