Google introduces new feature that lets users hum, whistle or sing to find songs

The technology giant Google has launched a revolutionary update that allows users to search for a song by merely singing, humming or whistling the melody. Google introduced the feature last Thursday, October 15.

Photo credit: hypebae.com

We all know how frustrating it is when you can’t remember the name of a song or any of the words but the tune is stuck in your head,

Krishna Kumar, Google Search senior product manager, said.

The feature is already part of the Google app and can be accessed by tapping the mic icon and saying “What’s this song?” or pressing the “Search a song” button. Upon activating it, a user just needs to hum or sing for 10 to 15 seconds before Google compares the melody with similar songs. Kumar assured that it does not need a perfect pitch to use the new feature.

After analyzing the tune, Google will show potential matches. Once a user selects a result, they will be presented with more information on the song and artist such as music videos and lyrics.

The tech company posted a video that shows the new feature on its YouTube page as well.

As to how it works, Kumar explained: 

When you hum a melody into Search, our machine learning models transform the audio into a number-based sequence representing the song’s melody.

Google has trained the machine learning models to “identify songs based on a variety of sources, including humans singing, whistling or humming, as well as studio recordings.” This allows it to remove other details from a song and find its respective sequence. The algorithm then compares it to songs across the globe to look for possible matches.

An easy way to explain it is that a song’s melody is like its fingerprint: They each have their own unique identity,

a post on The Google Blog says.

We’ve built machine learning models that can match your hum, whistle or singing to the right ‘fingerprint’.

“Hum to search” is currently available in English on Apple’s iOS and in over 20 languages on Google’s Android.