Oliver Haslam on July 1, 2020, 8:05 pm

Spotify Adding Apple Music-Like Real-Time Music Lyrics, Rolling Out To 26 Countries Now

Spotify has announced that time-synced lyrics are coming to its own app, but not for everyone. In fact, the new feature is initially limited to just Asia, India, and Latin America.

According to TechCrunch, this follows a previous test that was even more limited.

Last November, Spotify confirmed it was testing real-time lyrics synced to music in select markets. Tomorrow, the company will announce the launch of its new lyrics feature in 26 worldwide markets across Southeast Asia, India and Latin America. This will be the first time lyrics have been offered in 22 of these 26 markets, as only Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Mexico had some form of lyrics support in the past via other providers.

Also according to TechCrunch, the reason we won’t be seeing the same feature go live in the rest of the world just yet is thanks to the wonderful world of licensing. That might also mean that it could be some time, if ever, before we get to see it ourselves. It isn’t an issue that’s affected Apple Music, though – users of the streaming service have been able to enjoy real-time lyrics along with their songs since 2019.

TechCrunch, again, points out that the murky world of lyric licensing has often been so crazy that lyrics themselves have been stolen. And then madness ensued.

The following markets will gain access to the new feature starting tomorrow: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, El Salvador, Uruguay, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Spotify confirmed the above details to TechCrunch, noting the lyrics support will go live at 10 a.m. EST on Tuesday, June 30.

Last year, for example, Genius sued Google and its lyrics partner, LyricFind for $50 million, claiming it caught LyricFind red-handed stealing its lyrics. Genius had used a clever digital watermarking technique where it had set the 2nd, 5th, 13th, 14th, 16th and 20th apostrophes of each watermarked song as curly apostrophes, and all the other apostrophes straight. Interpreted as Morse code, the pattern spelled out the word “redhanded.”

What a time to be alive!