It happens to all of us: a song gets stuck in your head, and no matter how hard you think about it, you just can’t remember the name of the song. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to help you identify music that feels on the tip of your tongue. Between voice assistants, apps like Shazam, and other methods, you will never have an issue identifying a song again.
1. Utilize a Song Finder App
The easiest way to identify a song is by using a song finder app. These tools are designed to listen, search through databases, and provide results. If you hear a song out in public or have an earworm stuck in your head, open your preferred song finder app, and, voila, you can get the title, lyrics, and places to stream the song. Some popular options include Shazam and SoundHound, but there are others as well.
2. Ask Google By Humming, Whistling, or Singing
Another fast way to help identify a song is by using Google. You can do this from any device, using the methods outlined below.
Ask Google via Web Browser
From your preferred web browser, visit Google.com and select Search by Voice (the microphone at the right side of the search bar).
While Google is “listening,” say, sing, or hum what you remember from the song. You may need to sing or hum an entire verse or the complete chorus before Google picks it up. Also, try to avoid other background noise while doing this.
When you finish, Google will perform a web search based on what it heard and display matching results.
Ask Google via Android Device
Android users can also use Google’s voice search feature to find what song this is.
Note: The exact location of your Google search bar may vary based on your device, settings, and Android version.
To start, unlock your device and tap Search by Voice (the microphone on the right side of the search bar).
You can speak here, but you can also give Google further context by selecting Search a Song at the bottom of the screen. Your device will then listen while you speak, sing, or hum what you remember.
Once Google identifies potential matches, it will display the results for you, much like any other Google search.
3. Ask Siri, “What song is this?”
Apple users who own an iPad or iPhone can also utilize Siri to search for a song. To do this, simply say, “Hey Siri, what is this song?” and let her listen to the lyrics or tune. During my testing, I didn’t have luck singing the song myself, but she identified songs if they were playing in the background.
4. Search the Lyrics via Your Preferred Search Engine
This method doesn’t work if you can only remember the tune, but if you know the lyrics to a song, you can type them into your favorite search engine.
For example, if you type, “If you wanna run away with me, I know a galaxy,” into Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo, each will display “Levitating” by Dua Lipa. Some search engines will provide just the lyrics, while others, like Google and Bing, will also offer YouTube video results. You can also see where to stream the song, all based on a simple lyric search.
5. Access The r/NameThatSong Community
If you remember the lyrics to a song, then most of the entries in this list will help you out. But what if you heard just a tiny segment of a song on some short video, remember the music video, or remember the general “theme” of the song while not being able to pin down the lyrics? It could be time to ask Reddit.
The NameThatSong subreddit is a community of over 200,000 people who work together to try and identify a song based on the description, clips, and even humming uploaded by the poster. It’s like having a giant detective agency working to find your song, with you engaging in a constant back-and-forth with the community to hone in on the correct answer.
6. Visit Genius for Additional Search Power
Genius is known as “the world’s biggest collection of song lyrics and musical knowledge.” Their search function lets you type in the data you remember and will display results based on what you entered. Once again, you must know the lyrics, title, or artist for this to work. However, you will get a comprehensive list of results based on the database.
7. Ask Alexa, “What song is this?”
With Alexa, you can listen through a service like Amazon Music, Spotify, or another streaming service. If you have it set to play randomly, you can say, “Alexa, what song is this?” while streaming music. Alexa will pause the music, announce the name and artist of the song, and then return to your music.
8. Check With Your Music Streaming Service
You can also search directly with lyrics in the Spotify or Apple Music apps. No matter which app you use, as long as you know at least some lyrics from a tune, begin typing it into the search function and wait for the results to pop up. In this example, I typed in the beginning lyrics for “I Won’t Give Up” by Jason Mraz.
9. Try Deezer SongCatcher
Deezer is a free music app available online or on your mobile device. If you download the mobile app for iPhone or Android, you can utilize the SongCatcher feature, which lets you search for a song by singing or humming. Although it’s not perfect (it inaccurately identified one of the songs I tried during my testing), it is a solid free option that mainly selects the right thing.
To use it, simply open the Deezer app, navigate to Search in the bottom menu, then tap “What’s this song?” Your microphone will listen and display results based on what you sing or hum.
10. Search IMDB.com
This won’t work for all music searches, but IMDB.com can be super helpful if you are trying to identify a song from a movie or TV show. To find this information, you will need to search for the title of the movie or TV show, then scroll down to the “Did You Know” section and look for Soundtracks. Clicking this will open a soundtrack list (if it’s available), and you can identify the song from there.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will these apps or tools identify every song?
In all likelihood, these apps can identify millions of songs easily. It’s always possible lesser-known music may escape the database, but for all intents and purposes, you should rarely run into an instance where Shazam, Google, etc. can’t identify an artist or song title.
Do I need more than one song identification app?
There’s no harm in having multiple apps installed. For iPhone owners on iOS 14.2 and later, as Shazam is preinstalled through Control Center, another app certainly can’t hurt. Of course, you can always use Shazam alongside Apple Music or Spotify.
Are there any privacy concerns with song identification?
No, searching for songs should have little impact on privacy. Apple Music and Spotify for instance already know your music interests, so the worst case is that they will start recommending songs you searched for. In the case of Google, Alexa, Siri, etc., it’s just another search.
Image credit: DepositPhotos. All screenshots by Megan Glosson.
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