[Updated] Google Assistant's song identification feature broken

Update (July 05):

More reports:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/8w4ite/asking_assistant_to_identify_a_song_always/

Original story:

While Google is continuously adding new features (like making reservations and booking appointments) to it’s voice-triggered, AI-powered Google Assistant, some of the virtual assistant’s existing features appear to be falling apart.

Remember the ability to identify a song playing around you that got incorporated in Assistant back in 2017? Well it’s reportedly broken.

For over past two weeks, complaints have been pouring (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) on different help forums, with the affected users reporting of encountering an error stating “Sorry, something went wrong” on asking Assistant to recognize a song.

Users say…

I recently encountered a problem with the “what song is this” voice command on my Pixel 2 XL, the lines for identifying the song appear but they barely seem to move and I always get the same answer, “Sorry, something went wrong” , now playing on the locked phone seems to work fine.

Around today, I tried asking my Google Assistant to figure out a song for me. Normally she does it fine, but I noticed the bars that pick up the lyrics didn’t move at all, and then she says a problem occurred. I restarted my Pixel 2 already, but that didn’t work.

Some time within the past week, when using “what’s this song”, Assistant returns with, “Sorry, something went wrong.”… every time. This is happening across devices. It doesn’t appear to be “hearing” the music, because the animation is “flat”, rather than having high and low peaks as it does when it was working properly.

For the last 2 weeks, every time I ask the Google Assistant “What’s this song?”, it shows the vertical music lines as if it’s trying to recognize the song, but it never succeeds. After half a minute, it just states “Sorry, something went wrong.”

Here’s how some of the complainants word the issue on micro blogging site Twitter:

https://twitter.com/MoarCowbell90/status/1013234301129744384
https://twitter.com/Zyrokai/status/1012157715475587072

And on Google app‘s Play Store listing:

It’s worth mentioning that some of the affected users note the problem reportedly shows up only when Assistant through Google app is asked to recognize a song.

So, this could presumably be an issue with Google app. But there’s no confirmation as of yet.

Google’s aware

What’s appeasing is that just a few hours ago, one of the Community Specialists on Assistant’s official help forum escalated the matter considering the rising number of complaints.

I’ve escalated this issue to the concerned team and they’re looking into it.

While there’s yet to come an acknowledgement from Google itself, what’s good is that at least the problem has been brought to their notice.

We hope the company comes up with some clarity for those facing the issue. Rest assured, we are keeping a tab on all related developments and will update the story as and when anything newsworthy catches out sight.

PiunikaWeb is a unique initiative that focuses on investigative journalism. This means we do a lot of hard work to come up with news stories that are either ‘exclusive’ or ‘breaking’ in nature. Perhaps that’s the reason our work has been picked by the likes of Forbes, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and more. Do take a tour of our website to get a feel of our work. And if you like what we do, stay connected with us on Twitter (@PiunikaWeb) and other social media channels to receive timely updates on stories we publish.