Spotify begins rolling out real-time lyrics

iMore
iMore (Image credit: Windows Central)

What you need to know

  • Spotify has started to roll out its real-time song lyrics.
  • It announced the feature last year.
  • The feature has started showing up in the most recent Beta, and even on desktop.

Spotify has finally started to roll out its real-time song lyrics feature after it announced the feature last November.

As reported by Android Police:

One of the joys of listening to music is singing along, but if you don't want to make a fool of yourself or if you really want to understand what the artist is saying (or mumbling, humming, growling), you need to have quick access to lyrics. Spotify, one of the world's largest music streaming services, was still behind on this feature until now. The service is now slowly catching up and rolling out proper lyrics support to users.

According to the report, the feature has been spotted on the Spotify's beta version 8.5.46.848, and by several users on Twitter. As not everyone is seeing the updated feature, it seems as though the update is server-side, which means you shouldn't need to download an app update to start using it. The feature has reportedly been spotted on Spotify's desktop app as well.

Spotify began testing the feature last November for a small number of users.

Lyrics aren't available on all songs, but the ones that are have been provided by Musicxmatch. They can be found by swiping up inside the app, where the 'Behind the Lyrics' feature used to be.

Apple Music has had a similar feature for some months now, and perhaps more interestingly, a team of people dedicated to manually transcribing songs to ensure that the lyrics are accurate.

Stephen Warwick
News Editor

Stephen Warwick has written about Apple for five years at iMore and previously elsewhere. He covers all of iMore's latest breaking news regarding all of Apple's products and services, both hardware and software. Stephen has interviewed industry experts in a range of fields including finance, litigation, security, and more. He also specializes in curating and reviewing audio hardware and has experience beyond journalism in sound engineering, production, and design. Before becoming a writer Stephen studied Ancient History at University and also worked at Apple for more than two years. Stephen is also a host on the iMore show, a weekly podcast recorded live that discusses the latest in breaking Apple news, as well as featuring fun trivia about all things Apple. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwarwick9