YouTube is experimenting with a new search-by-song feature on Android devices, allowing users to identify a song by humming or singing. According to YouTube’s support page, users can switch from voice search to this song search feature and hum, sing, or record a song for three or more seconds.
YouTube will then identify the melody and guide the user to relevant videos containing the searched song, based on machine learning models.
Currently, the capability is available only to a limited number of Android users. The feature is trying to make YouTube a competitor with other music recognition apps such as Apple’s Shazam, SoundHound, and MusixMatch. YouTube’s parent company, Google, had introduced a similar functionality in 2020 across the Google app, Google Search widget, and Google Assistant, although it required users to hum for 10-15 seconds.
