Google search now lets you hum to it when you forget a song

Google announced its newest feature, hum to search, on October 15, 2020. This option enables you to hum a song you cannot remember, to the Google Search widget or the latest version of Google app.

The California-headquartered technology company also extended this feature to its Artificial Intelligence(AI)-based Google Assistant. It works when you say, "Hey Google, what's this song?" One can hum the tune, which doesn't have to be pitch perfect, for ten to fifteen seconds and it then gives you a list of songs similar to the tune.

The list is generated by Google's machine learning algorithms that identify the tune, enabling them to give the "potential song matches."

How does this work?

The company's search models are trained to identify singing, whistling, humming or studio-recording of the tune. As the machine learning model identifies a tune, it is converted into a numeric sequence that will represent the song's melody.

"A song's melody is like it's fingerprint," said Krishna Kumar, Senior Product Manager of Google Search. Having their own unique identities, the tunes are matched to the "right fingerprint" by their machine learning models. As the number-based sequences are generated, the algorithm compares them to songs that are available across the globe.

Built on the work of Google's music recognition technology, the models match the human version of the tune to a song that was recorded in a studio. This music recognition technology was used in the 'Now Playing' feature found in Google Pixel phones and the SoundSearch feature on the Google app.

The "hum to search" feature is currently available in more than twenty languages on Android and works in English for iOS users.