YouTube Music rolling out Sound Search on Android, iOS

Abner Li | Jul 20 2024 - 8:51 am PT

YouTube Music for Android is rolling out a long-awaited “Sound Search” feature that lets you “Play, sing, or hum a song” to find it.

Update 7/20: In May, YouTube Music rolled back “Sound Search” — which we now know is the official name — after a few days of wider availability. Following the Monday announcement, it’s here again on Android and iOS. We’re seeing it with version 7.10 and a server-side update.

Besides having YTM listen to a live song, you can “try singing the lyrics or humming the melody.”

Original 5/24: Tap the magnifying glass icon in the top-right corner and you’ll notice a new waveform icon next to the microphone. (That voice search capability is unchanged today.) While the two side-by-side buttons look somewhat odd, it’s faster than the main YouTube app placing both search features on one screen with a switcher up top.

A vibrant search page in YouTube Music will prompt you to “Play, sing, or hum a song.” The latter capability was first introduced in 2020 for Google Search. It builds upon the Pixel’s Now Playing feature, and came to the YouTube app last October. AI is used “to match the sound to the original recording.”

The identification process can be quite fast in my brief usage. A fullscreen results page shows cover art, song name, artist, album, year, and even download/offline status, as well as Play or save to playlist shortcuts. The standard overflow menu is also available for everything else.

You can exit this screen from the top-left corner or perform another search at the bottom. YTM started testing this capability in March, while Google Play Music offered something like this a long time ago.

Song search is a server-side update that we’re seeing with version 7.02 of YouTube Music for Android. We’re not seeing it rolled out to iOS just yet.