What you need to know
- Spotify has confirmed it's testing live lyrics in the U.S.
- The feature has already been available in 27 countries, including Korea which only just received Spotify.
- Only a small group of U.S. Spotify users will have access to the feature while it's being tested.
Sing-alongs are always fun, but it helps if you know the words to the song. Some apps like Shazam already offer real-time lyrics, which can be helpful for songs you are just discovering and may not be too familiar with. Finally, after launching its own real-time lyrics in more than two dozen countries last Summer, Spotify has stated that it's finally testing the feature in the United States, according to a statement made to Engadget:
We can confirm we're currently testing our lyrics feature to a select number of users in the US. At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve our user experience. Some of those tests end up paving the way for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning. We don't have any further news to share at this time.
Given that the feature has already been available in so many markets, it's curious why it's taken longer to launch in the U.S. At the moment, Spotify users are treated to the company's "Behind the Lyrics" which offers some background insight on currently playing songs, although this could be phased out if real-time lyrics are brought stateside. And that could be a bigger if than we might expect, as Spotify apparently experimented with real-time lyrics in Canada only for the test to end and the feature to disappear indefinitely.
Bringing real-time lyrics to more regions, particularly the U.S., would allow Spotify to further its lead on some of the best music streaming services that already offer the feature in some limited form. The feature, which is powered by Musixmatch, is currently being tested with a small group of users in the U.S., so it could be some time before we see the feature expand to more people, assuming things go that way.
