Huawei’s hidden feature: Recognize songs with EMUI. Have you ever heard a song on the radio and want to know what it is? Are you walking through a shopping mall and need the song that is playing as background music? Apart from googling the lyrics or some kind of information, did you know that there are cell phones that have song recognition tools? One of them is Huawei.
This is possible thanks to the partnership carried out at the end of 2019 between ACRCloud, a provider of automatic content recognition technology, and the mobile brand, who joined forces to bring automatic music recognition and audio search capabilities to the native music application running on the manufacturer’s phones.
System apps such as the music player are not just for listening to our favorite songs but, as you can see below, for much more.
How does Huawei song recognition work?
The key to the system is found in the technological solutions of ACRCloud, which allow users of Huawei Music, the EMUI music app to quickly identify music tracks that are played nearby. But it is also possible to go further as the tool can recognize hummed tunes, or search for audio files stored on an unnamed device and tell which group they belong to.
This automatic content recognition (ACR) is based on acoustic fingerprint detection in terms of accuracy and speed. The algorithm takes care of recognizing the tones and their rhythm and adds them to an ever-growing catalog of search results. According to them, Huawei Music will provide the user with information about music tracks and, in addition, add personalized recommendations.
A hidden feature within the music app
Huawei Music is a music service created for users of the brand’s mobile devices that, in part, mimics Apple Music and the now-defunct Google Music by offering a complete catalog of songs, subscriptions, podcasts, and more.
Aiming to provide a unique music experience for brand users, it offers a library of high-quality music and premium radio programs that, before the U.S. coup and its sanctions on the manufacturer, had 150 million monthly active users. It may not have that many now but at least we can still use it, as the headline of this article says, to recognize songs with our phone. How is it done?
Very simple. First of all, is to locate the Huawei Music app on your phone, you can find it by opening the app drawer and entering its name in the search although by default it usually comes installed on the phone’s desktop. Once inside, among the many options that appear in front of us, you have to use the icon with four dots that are located in the upper right corner.
Here inside we will find, among all the extra tools of the app, we have one called Identify, the third icon starting from the left of the top. When you click on it and accept the relevant permissions, the smartphone will start listening to the song that is playing or as you hum the melody -with the best of your intentions-. Wait a few seconds and the result will appear before you.
Now, if you click on each of the buttons, you can listen to the song or a demo of it (depending on the service subscription you have), save it as a favorite, download it or share it with your friends through messaging apps or social networks.
Recognize songs quickly from the desktop
Okay, we know that the route is not the most comfortable in the world when you have to enter several submenus from the Huawei Music app. A song lasts 3 minutes and if we catch it in its last bars, likely, we will not be in time to recognize the author and the name of the song but, luckily, we can create a shortcut on the desktop.
When you are inside the song identification option that we just talked about, within the Huawei Music app, you will see that at the top right there is an icon with a square and an arrow in the upper right corner. By activating it, we will automatically create an icon on the screen of our phone that gives access to this tool immediately, without having to follow the confusing route mentioned in the previous steps.
Alternatives for other mobiles
Shazam, which was first launched in 2002, is probably the app that comes to mind when we talk about a system for recognizing songs with the cell phone. Best of all, it’s a free app for both Google Android and iPhone that can identify songs with just a few seconds of listening by using your phone’s microphone to listen to the song being played. One of the advantages of this platform is its ability to isolate the song from the surrounding noise, allowing you to identify singles either on the radio or TV or even in a nightclub.
Of course, Shazam is not the only application that allows us to do this. Soundhound also identifies songs quickly from a short snippet, and keeps, like Huawei’s Music app, a history of searches made with the app so you can track them down again later.
However, before you head to the Android or iOS app store and download any of these options, it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at the virtual assistant you have on your phone.
Siri and Google Assistant are also good listeners
You may be surprised to find that your phone already has this feature built-in. The voice assistant on the iPhone and Android can do the same as the Huawei phones or any of the two apps mentioned above. And it’s so simple to use that you just have to activate your voice assistant (whether it’s Siri on iPhone, Google Assistant on most Android devices, or even Bixby on Samsung) and ask it to identify what song is playing.
Like Shazam, the virtual assistants on these different brands use the phone’s microphone to listen to the track and compare it to information they have housed in a huge database. After a few moments of listening, the artist and song title will be displayed, along with an album image. Tapping on it on an Android phone will take you to a Google search page for more information. On an iPhone, it will open Apple Music where you can listen to the track if you have an active subscription.
