Google has a new ‘hum to search’ functionality for those who can’t get a song or its title out of their heads.
Hum to Search on iPhone
A new feature has been added to Google’s search app today. ‘Hum to Search’ uses a machine learning algorithm to pick up the audio cues and identify the song’s title on the internet.
Users can tap the mic icon in-widget or in-app to call up the search function, then either tap ‘Search a song’ or say ‘what’s this song?’ for the song search option. Hum the tune, then wait for the results to show up.
Singing or whistling the song is also allowed, with Google using models to transform it into a number-based sequence to represent the melody before comparing it to existing songs.
Hum to Search in video
Google says source models and audio recordings are what’s needed to identify the numeric sequence, and thus users won’t need to sing or hum perfectly for it to work.
Currently, the functionality is only in English but Google promises other language options in the future.
