Previously, YouTube had announced its commitment to enhancing the music discovery experience on its platform by launching a new music recognition feature enabling users to recognize a track by listening to it, or even humming it.
Initially deployed only on YouTube, this feature was not available on YouTube Music, which represented a gap for users, especially given that competing platforms had already been offering a similar integrated function for several years. One example is Deezer and its SongCatcher feature.
However, since March, the music recognition feature on YouTube has been extended and is now also available on YouTube Music! Here, the platform uses artificial intelligence to recognize the sound or melody and associate it with the original recording, offering users a selection of matching tracks.
To access this new feature, YouTube Music users can find a dedicated icon next to the voice button in the search bar, to hum a song, play it on another device or sing it, allowing the artificial intelligence to match it with the original song.
The feature is being rolled out progressively to YouTube Music users on Android devices, with future availability planned for iOS devices too.
If sound recognition on YouTube could help artists get views on their clips more easily, on YouTube Music, the feature could help artists increase their number of streams and add-to-library.
However, while it remains crucial to understand the real impact of this feature on music discovery and on increasing artists’ number of streams, there is still a lack of transparency when it comes to accessing YouTube Music music recognition searches data… For now, it’s impossible to assess the real impact of music recognition, but we’re looking forward to the new analytics that will be provided.
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