Spotify is testing Apple Music-like live lyrics in the United States

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What you need to know

  • Spotify is testing a new live lyrics feature with some users in the United States.

Spotify is testing a new live lyrics feature similar to that offered by Apple Music. The feature is currently being tested with some users in the United States.

According to Engadget, Spotify is A/B testing a feature that will display time-synced lyrics as a song plays, allowing users to sing along. But the new feature is only available a portion of people thanks to the A/B testing situation.

Don't be surprised if you never see these live lyrics show up, though. Spotify is a big fan of A/B testing, so only a subset of its users will actually be able to use the feature. While the company has said that on-screen lyrics are among its most widely requested features, the whole point of this exercise is to measure the demand for lyrics in the company's US user pool. Spotify declined to comment went asked how many users it planned to make the feature available to, but it provided the following statement:"We can confirm we're currently testing our lyrics feature to a select number of users in the US," a spokesperson told Engadget in an email. "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."

Apple Music already offers a similar feature that has proven popular and Spotify itself has tested live lyrics in other regions, including Brazil, Mexico, and Hong Kong. There's currently no timescale for when the feature will be made available to the public at large, however.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.