If you know or fall into saying to your mobile or Google smart speaker, Ok Google, What’s This Song, and hum or whistle it for about 15 seconds you’ll get out of doubt as I’ll tell you the title and singer plus several more options.
You know that song that goes “na na na na na na na na naaaaaaaaa na na na na na na na na na naaaaaaaaaaa”? Or the one that starts with the guitar chords going “da na na na na na naa”?.
We all know how frustrating it is when you can’t remember the name of a song or any of the words, but the melody is stuck in your head.
With Ok Google you can figure it out, without needing the lyrics, the artist’s name or the perfect tune.
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How to Know What’s That Song with Ok Google (the Google Assistant)
By humming, whistling or singing a tune to the Google Assistant it will tell you the song you are looking for and the likelihood of it being that one depending on how good or not you are at performing those actions.
On your mobile device, open the latest version of the Google app or find your Google Search widget, tap the microphone icon and say “What Song Is It?” or click the “Find a Song” button.
Also if you have it set up you can tell your phone directly, Ok Google, What’s This Song.
Then start humming for 10-15 seconds and as if by magic the song or several songs will appear if in doubt for you to say if this is it.
This feature is currently available in English on iOS, and in more than 20 languages on Android.
And they hope to expand it to more languages in the future.
Once you’re done humming, the machine learning algorithm helps you identify possible song matches.
Don’t worry, you don’t need a perfect ringtone to discover the song you’re looking for.
We’ll show you the most likely options based on the melody.
You can then select the best match and explore the song and artist information, watch the accompanying music videos or listen to the song in your favorite music app, find the lyrics, read the analysis and even check out other recordings of the song when available.
Here are some commands with which you can invoke this feature of the Google Assistant.
- “Hey Google” “Hello Google” “Ok Google, what’s the name of this song”.
- “Hey Google” “Hello Google” “Ok Google, what song is it”.
- “Hey Google” “Hello Google” Ok Google, what song is this “.
- “Hey Google” “Hello Google” Ok Google, what song is this”.
And an endless number of possibilities and variations that will make you discover or remember the song that was on your mind.
More options to find out What song is this?
If you can’t or don’t want to use Ok Google, What song is this, because of principles, because you like to have variety or you don’t like it easy you can use these other options.
Siri (iPhone)
You can use Siri to identify a song on most Apple devices, including the Apple Watch, but it has to be the original version.
It won’t recognize if you hum or sing.
Say, “Hey Siri,” or long press the power button on an iPhone or the digital crown on an Apple Watch.
Ask, “What song is this?”.
If the song is playing, Siri will name it and give you a link to Apple Music.
Shazam (Android or iPhone)
Shazam was the original music recognition service and offers handy extras like synced lyrics, links to some of the best music streaming services, and easy sharing on social media.
Apple acquired Shazam in 2018, but the app is still available for Android in addition to iOS.
It also works on many of our picks for the best smartwatches.
- Open the app and tap the Shazam button to identify a song.
- To add a shortcut to Shazam on the iPhone, go to Settings, Control Center and tap the Add button next to Music Recognition. You now have a Shazam button in Control Center. On an Android device, you can press and hold the Shazam app in the app drawer and then tap Shazam Now.
- If you want Shazam to be on in the background so it can continue to identify what’s playing around you, you can turn on automatic Shazam by opening the app and holding down the Shazam button.
Like Siri, Shazam cannot recognize a tune that you sing or hum yourself.
Now Playing (Google Pixel phones only).
If you have a Pixel 2 or later Google Pixel phone, there’s a handy feature called Now Playing that’s built in. Here’s how to use it:
- Go to Settings, Sound & Vibrate, Advanced, and then Now Playing.
- Turn on the Identify songs playing nearby option. When you turn it on for the first time, your Pixel will download the song database.
- Just glance at your lock screen to see the title and artist of any song that’s playing. You can also find a full song history under Settings, Sound & Vibration, Advanced, Current Play, Play History.
How does this song finder work?
An easy way to explain it is that a song’s melody is like its fingerprint: Each has its own identity.
They’ve created machine learning models that can match your humming, whistling or singing to the correct “fingerprint.”
When you hum a tune in Search, the machine learning models transform the audio into a number-based sequence that represents the melody of the song.
Those models are trained to identify songs based on a variety of sources, including humans singing, whistling or humming, as well as studio recordings.
The algorithms also remove all other details, such as accompanying instruments and the timbre and pitch of the voice. What we are left with is the song’s numerical sequence, or fingerprint.
They compare these sequences to thousands of songs from around the world and we identify possible matches in real time.
For example, if you listen to “Don’t be shy” by Tiësto & Karol G, you will recognize the song whether it is sung, whistled or hummed.
Similarly, machine learning models recognize the melody of the studio-recorded version of the song, which we can use to compare with a person’s hummed audio.
This builds on the work of the Research team’s music recognition technology. We launched Now Playing on the Pixel 2 in 2017, using deep neural networks to bring low-power music recognition to mobile devices.
In 2018, they brought the same technology to the SoundSearch feature in the Google app and we expanded the reach to a catalog of millions of songs.
This new experience takes it a step further, because we can now recognize songs without the lyrics or the original song. All they need is a buzz.