The song stuck in your head has a title but oh no, what’s the song?! Readers keep asking for an easy way to find the title of a song whose lyrics one partially knows. There are solutions, a recent one being Google’s ‘hum to search’ feature. It’s like what you may have done with apps like Shazam. With Google, it’s way easier.

Google launched Now Playing on the Pixel 2 in 2017 and then the same technology was made a part of the SoundSearch feature in the Google app. In 2020, things have become simpler.

To access the feature, all you need to do is ensure that you have latest version of Google app. Next, hit the Google Assistant Button and say “what’s this song?”. In the next 10 or 15 seconds, hum the song. If you know the lyrics, just sing your heart out. If you only remember the tune, try to hum it. Chances are Google will throw up some good results.

There’s more, the new technology is currently available in 20 different languages on Android, but only in English on iOS.

“After you’re finished humming, our machine learning algorithm helps identify potential song matches. And don’t worry, you don’t need perfect pitch to use this feature. We’ll show you the most likely options based on the tune. Then you can select the best match and explore information on the song and artist, view any accompanying music videos or listen to the song on your favorite music app, find the lyrics, read analysis and even check out other recordings of the song when available,” Krishna Kumar, senior product manager, Google Search, has said in a blog post.

Other technologies try to match a tune to a database of existing melody versions of the song. With Google, the search makes “machine learning models transform the audio into a number-based sequence representing the song’s melody”. The 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 take away all the other details, like accompanying instruments and the voice’s timbre and tone. What we’re left with is the song’s number-based sequence, or the fingerprint.”

Meanwhile, Apple’s iOS 14.2 update for iPhone has added Shazam to the Control Center, which allows users to easily identify new songs. The app was initially released in 2002 and the idea was to allow songs users to identify songs that were playing nearby. Such was the success of the app that it was integrated into Apple’s voice assistant Siri with iOS 8, which meant that users could ask Siri the name of a song and it would identify it.