This week, Spotify is rolling out the ability to find songs by searching for their lyrics. It’s a feature that’s been a long time coming and it will undoubtedly become second-nature for users in no time at all.
Spotify designer Lin Wang first shared the news in a tweet on Monday. The new search function is available on iOS or Android and our initial tests show that it works as advertised. We tried a few examples of English, Spanish, and Hindi lyrics and found the correct song with just a few words. That probably won’t prove to be the case for more obscure songs, but rest assured that Smash Mouth’s All Star is readily searchable.
It’s unclear which service is providing the lyrics transcription for Spotify’s search and the company didn’t say when it responded to our request for comment. Back in July, Spotify partnered with Musixmatch to provide real-time lyrics for a karaoke-style approach. So that partnership may have expanded in the meantime. The streaming music giant has also worked with Genius for a long time.
Lyric search has been available in Apple Music for a couple of years, but few people subscribe to multiple music services. Those in the Spotify ecosystem will no longer need to go back and forth between Google and the app until they hit on the right song.
Spotify is also expanding its software offerings with the just-announced Soundtrap Capture app. The app functions as a real-time audio collaboration tool and is primarily intended for musicians to work together on new tracks.
Capture is very similar to the voice memo app that comes with iOS. You see a big record button and a waveform of your recorded audio. But it allows collaborators to hear your recordings and add their own. Testing it out with another person in the room, we found audio files appear immediately and can be layered to your heart’s desire. Any serious editing will need to be done in a separate program, but it’s a perfect tool for musicians trying to quarantine and compose at the same time.