YouTube is testing “Hum to search”, will direct you to music and even Shorts featuring the song

Remember the good ol’ days when Shazam and Soundhound wowed us with the revolutionary ability to figure out what song you had stuck in your head simply by letting you hum it? Well, YouTube is now mimicking that feature with an experiment it’s running right now.

Over on the YouTube Help page, the company announced that it’s running the experiment with a small percentage of Premium users, and that after a simple three second sample of your humming that super catchy hook in a song you forgot, it can direct you to the proper search result.

What’s more is that it will put a new twist on this by directing you to other user-generated content, including YouTube Shorts that feature that song and match your hum pattern. Honest, this is weird, but kind of cool all at once. Who would have though I’d be writing about such a thing in 2023, right?

While a bit wild, it’s not that difficult to pull off using the tech we have nowadays, but it’s still fascinating to see YouTube give a tip of the hat to pioneers like Shazam and Soundhound with this new feature. Seeing how these types of experiments come and go and hopefully get integrated into the main app if successful will be the most interesting.

I’m willing to bet that Google will develop this further, and inject some sort of AI to make it even better. Let me know if you’ve ever used apps that do this kind of thing or if this will be your first time experiencing this black magic.