What Is this song? How do I identify songs or music quickly?

There are many different ways to identify a song quickly and easily.

What is this song? Ways to identify songs:

1. Use your Smartphone assistant:

This is the simplest option for finding out the name of a song while it is playing.

Speed is often key here as you need to get in quickly while the song is still playing, or you may end up having to hum it into your phone afterwards!

If you have a voice activated assistant such as Siri (iPhone), Google assistant (Android) or Bixby (Samsung Android) then you simply need to activate the assistant and say “What’s this song”.

Find name of a song using Siri

Since iOS 14.2 the iPhone has included a built-in Music Recognition powered by Shazam. You can access this feature in the Control Centre of your iPhone or by simply activating Siri using the “Hey Siri” prompt.

While the music is playing you should say something like “Hey Siri, what’s this song” or “Hey Siri, Shazam this music”

Once identified, the details of the song will appear as a notification which you can then choose to open or save.

For more ways to use Siri see the post below:

3 ways your iPhone can change your life

Find a song using Google Assistant

To initiate Google Assistant simply hold down the Home button or say “Hey Google, what’s this song”. You can hold the phone near the music source or simply hum or sing part of the song to give the Google Assistant the information it needs.

Google Pixel devices have a ‘Now Playing’ feature. This feature, once enabled, will display details of a song playing on the lock screen of your phone.

Use the Now Playing feature on Google Pixel devices

To enable this feature go to Settings > Sounds & Vibration > Now Playing

Enable Identify songs playing nearby

Find a song using Samsung Virtual Assistant

To use the Samsung Virtual Assistant to recognise music or songs, simply use a command like “Hi Bixby, What song is this” within range of the music playing.

As with the other voice assistants, you can activate the Samsung Virtual Assistant using a long hold on the relevant button. Alternatively use the voice command “Hi Bixby”.

While the iPhone uses Shazam to power this music recognition feature, it is not clear what Samsung uses but it doesn’t seem to have the same speed as Shazam.

2. Use a music recognition app:

While you are listening to the song or piece of music you can use a music recognition app such as Shazam or SoundHound.

These music recognition apps can identify a song or a piece of music by simply listening to a few seconds of it.

3. Search the lyrics of the song:

Know some of the lyrics? If you know some of the lyrics to the song you can type them into Google or Bing or another search engine to try to find the name of the song. You could also try speaking the lyrics to a voice assistant such as Google or Alexa (or hum it if you are brave enough!)

The winner from all the above for identifying songs and music is the Google Pixel phone.

The Pixel phone allows you to identify a song playing in the background even without an internet connection and without having to initiate the Google Assistant.