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Forget Shazam: Spotify is working on in-app song ID

YouTube Music already has a similar feature.

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Jul 24, 2026 — 11:01 AM ET

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A woman holds a Google Pixel 3 phone with Spotify open on it.

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TL;DR

Spotify is developing a song identification function, judging by code in its app.
The feature will let you ID music playing nearby using your phone’s microphone without leaving the Spotify app.
It’s unclear when song ID will make its way to Spotify users.

Spotify is working on a feature that could mean subscribers never have to touch Shazam again. Code in the latest update for the Spotify app points to an in-development song identification tool, an option subscribers have been requesting for years.

Thanks to some help from Assemble Debug, we’ve now seen strings in version 9.1.70.1086 of the Spotify app for Android make very clear references to song ID functionality. Though the changes here were discovered in the Android app, specifically, it’s safe to assume they’ll make their way to the iOS version around the same time.

There’s no shortage of ways to identify a song using your phone. Voice assistants can do it, there are standalone apps like Apple-owned Shazam, and Pixel phones can ID ambient music automatically. YouTube Music even has a song identification feature (very much like the one Spotify is cooking up) already. Still, the addition will be a great quality-of-life improvement for Spotify subscribers.

Code explicitly references the ability to “Identify a song”:

Code

<string name="identify_song_content_description">Identify a song</string>

We’ve also seen strings referencing “listening” and “analyzing”:

Code

<string name="audio_recognition_flow_listening">Listening…</string>
<string name="audio_recognition_flow_analyzing">Analysing…</string>

There are strings related to errors, too, including one that’ll show when Spotify can’t access your device’s microphone.

Code

<string name="audio_recognition_flow_permission_denied">Microphone access is off. Turn it on in Settings to identify songs.</string>

Code

<string name="audio_recognition_flow_cancel">Cancel</string>
<string name="audio_recognition_flow_error_generic">Something went wrong. Please try again.</string>
<string name="audio_recognition_flow_no_match">We couldn’t find a match</string>
<string name="audio_recognition_flow_retry">Try again</string>

It seems like the new song identification function will be accessible from the top of Spotify’s UI, with a button that lives near the camera icon that opens the app’s QR code scanner. (We haven’t seen that button, but if I had to guess, it’ll likely be a microphone icon.)

A built-in song ID function will make it easier for Spotify subscribers to add music they hear out in the world to their Spotify libraries, sparing users the hassle of identifying in a separate app and then searching in Spotify. It’s a definite leg up versus streaming apps that don’t support similar features.

It’s always hard to tell when in-development changes spotted in app code might make their way to users, but here’s hoping this one is coming soon. We’ll be keeping an eye out for Spotify’s song ID feature in the wild.