You’ll no longer have an excuse to mess up the lyrics of every song. Spotify is finally adding a live lyrics feature, so all you have to do is play a song to finally find out if Taylor Swift is singing about “Starbucks lovers” (the answer, sadly, is no).
Spotify teamed up with Musixmatch to fully integrate live lyrics into the app. The company already powers Spotify’s lyrics search, which turns up song results based on lyrics you type in the search bar. The live lyrics feature is available to both free and premium Spotify users globally.
Spotify started testing live lyrics within its app back in February, though it was only available to a small subset of test users. On-screen lyrics have been one of the company’s most widely requested features.
Spotify had a lyrics snippet feature before this, powered by the lyric and annotation company Genius, which extracts interesting tidbits about the song’s lyrics and history as you’re listening to it. Engadget had reported earlier this year that this feature would likely go away if Spotify chose to launch the live lyrics ability.
To see the new live lyrics, open Spotify on iOS or Android and tap on the Now Playing view on a song. As you’re listening, swipe up from the bottom to reveal the lyrics, which will scroll up in real-time.
Suppose there’s a particular line that speaks to you. In that case, you can tap the Share button at the button to select the lyrics you want to put out into the world, the same way an ageing millennial (me) would painstakingly type out lines from Taking Back Sunday’s “There’s No ‘I’ In Team” to share in an AIM away message. Listen, feel your feelings!
The lyrics feature will also be integrated into the Spotify desktop app and its respective TV apps through the same Now Playing menu. You can also access it from your game console, including the PlayStation 4, PS5 and the Xbox One.