Don’t you just hate it when you get a melody stuck in your head but cannot remember the song’s name? This annoying moment may be a thing of the past thanks to Google’s latest feature update.

On October 15, the company rolled out a new service allowing Google users to simply hum the tune of a song into their smartphone to find its name.

To use this new service, make sure you have the latest version of Google installed on your phone. Tap the mic icon on Google and select ‘What’s the song’ or ‘Search a song’. Then start humming for 10-15 seconds. You may also whistle or sing the melody.

On Google Assistant, it’s just as simple. Say “Hey Google, what’s this song?” and then hum the tune.

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” explains the company.

Google’s 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 left is the song’s number-based sequence, which are then compared to thousands of songs from around the world to identify potential matches in real time.

“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 favourite music app, find the lyrics, read analysis and even check out other recordings of the song when available,” the company adds.

This feature is currently available in English on iOS, and in more than 20 languages on Android. Google hopes to expand this to more languages in the future.

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