YouTube Music now offers real-time lyrics for songs
What's the story
YouTube Music is now offering automatic tracking for lyrics when playing a song.
Any song with lyrics uploaded to the audio streaming app will be able to have its lyrics tracked in real time.
Each portion of the lyrics will be highlighted upon call, and its text size will be enlarged within the Lyrics tab of the app.
Here's more to know.
Context
Why does this story matter?
Real-time lyrics aren't entirely new in the world of music streaming. The feature exists on popular services like Spotify and Apple Music for some time now. However, it has been lacking on YouTube Music.
Previously, Google's music streaming platform had been capable of displaying only static, self-scrollable lyrics, but the new update adds real-time music tracking to YouTube Music on both Android and iOS.
Information
The feature has been highlighted by a Reddit user
The ability to track lyrics in real time has been brought to the spotlight via a Reddit post by u/jadavilon on the r/YoutubeMusic community. The post talks about the new update to the lyrics.
Details
Text size, background color, and line spacing will be modified
When a song is played, YouTube Music will highlight the line that is currently being played by turning the background color of the line to white in that instance of time.
Interestingly, the audio streaming app will also increase the text size (and line spacing).
In addition, upon the line change, the lyrics will be scrolled up automatically.
Scenario
Real-time lyrics are available to limited users at the moment
Real-time lyrics were first tested in the YouTube Music app for Google TV/Android TV last year when Google partnered with MusixMatch, an Italian music data company.
Following the previous rollout, the feature is finally accessible on Android and iOS.
However, only a small number of users have received the update that introduces real-time lyrics.
A wider rollout is expected in the coming weeks.
Information
Apple Music and Spotify already offer real-time lyrics
The real-time lyrics feature in YouTube Music looks more or less similar to the one that exists for Spotify and Apple Music. In addition to MusixMatch, the live lyrics tracking on YouTube Music will also be powered by LyricFind.