The YouTube Music app for Android is rolling out a feature that’s both Shazam and your friend when you say “Hey, what’s that song…” before humming a little bar. The feature lets you hum, whistle, sing, or play a recording of a song to figure out what it is.
If you have this new feature, you’ll see a new wave icon next to the microphone icon when you click the search button in the upper right corner of the app. Click this button and the application will start listening. It’s not too shabby either! When I tested it, it was able to recognize actual recordings incredibly quickly, making it a great alternative to Shazam.
As far as listening to my humming goes, it accurately picked out most of the songs I sing, whistle and hum on my phone, but there are some interesting omissions:
This is supposed to be the “death” of “They Might Be Giants”.
I’m here whistling Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell.” At least Finnish hair metal retro band “Reckless Love” is at least within the ballpark, right?
I can’t blame too much for the mistakes. I threw some songs at it that I’m guessing most people wouldn’t recognize from a few seconds of humming. Overall, it’s fast, perhaps faster than Google Assistant has had for years with the same feature. Search buzz has also been reported in YouTube Music for iOS in recent months, although it doesn’t appear to be widespread yet.
