YouTube Music Gets “Sound Search” on Android and iOS

Google is finally rolling out “Sound Search” to the YouTube Music app. The feature lets you find songs by humming, singing, or whistling a melody. You don’t even have to know the song lyrics. Humming any part of the song you remember is enough for YouTube Music to help figure it out.

Hum-to-search was first introduced in 2020 with the Google app and Google Search widget. The feature uses Google’s machine learning models to create a “number-based sequence” that identifies and matches hummed melodies to a song. 

Sound Search is available in the YouTube Music search tab. Open YouTube Music, tap the search icon, then select the waveform icon (adjacent to the microphone icon). When the recording screen appears, start humming or singing melodies and tunes from the song. You can also record a song playing in the background to perform a Shazam-like search. 

YouTube Music takes 10-15 seconds to record, analyze, and match hummed melodies to a song. When Google’s machine learning algorithm identifies a potential match, it displays the song title, artist(s), cover art, album name, and year of release on the result page.

You’ll also find options to play or save the identified song to a playlist. If the result doesn’t match the song you’re looking for, tap the waveform button to perform another search.

YouTube Music’s Sound Search was temporarily available to a few Android users in May as a test run. The feature is now available to all users with or without an active YouTube Premium subscription. If your YouTube Music app doesn’t have the Sound Search option, update it to the latest version.