YouTube Music emoji search in the wild.
YouTube Music is making it easier than ever to find your favorite songs — with emoji searching.
The newly launched YouTube Music app offers a new way to experience music videos, playlists, live performances. But there’s also a novel new way to search.
You can test it out yourself by searching with a baby emoji, one emoji, and the phrase ‘more time’ to bring up Britney Spears’ debut hit, “…Baby One More Time”.
But nearly any song can be emoji searched. Want to hear Katy Perry’s new hit song, “Firework”? Hit that firework emoji and search to your heart’s content.
Another interesting feature is the ability to search with just a bit of lyric or phrase to find the song you can’t get out of your head.
A simple search of “boom badoom boom boom” will give you Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass”. Try the snowman emoji if you’re a Disney fan.
Google has been pioneering new ways to search for songs since the introduction of its Google Home smart speaker in 2016. Asking Google to “play that song from Frozen” will get you what you want to hear.
Google overhauled the YouTube Music experience to make its Premium service more attractive. The newly relaunched app now features a dark mode and the ability to listen to music videos in the background on both Android and iOS. The app also highlights new trending music videos and gives listeners the option to stream audio-only.
The new emoji search is just one way Google is expanding the way you can search for your favorite songs.
The only downside is that emoji search does not appear to work in the standard YouTube app. For now, this is a YouTube Music-only feature.
We’re not exactly sure how hunting for emojis to type is any faster than typing “baby one more time,” but at least now it’s an option.