YouTube Music starts distributing lyrics to Android users in real time

Google is starting to host live lyrics on YouTube Music. Not all YouTube Music users are eligible yet.

Along with Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music, YouTube Music is one of the most popular music streaming platforms in the world. And while YouTube Music has received a number of feature upgrades over the years, some still feel that the platform is still quite limited in this area compared to the competition.

Google Starts Putting Live Lyrics on YouTube Music

Some notable shortcomings of YouTube Music include the lack of a dedicated desktop app, lower sample rates for both free users and paying subscribers, and the fact that YouTube Music free plan users cannot listen to their music in the background.

And if YouTube Music users continue to grapple with these issues, Google still has to address one of the most important user requests for the platform: the lack of real-time lyrics. Several recent posts on the YouTube Music subreddits seem to indicate that Mountain View has begun rolling out this feature to some of the platform’s users. Since Google has been testing this feature to display live lyrics on YouTube Music for several months now, the official rollout of this feature should come as no surprise.

While it is currently unclear if the iOS version has started to comply, the screenshots show that some users of the Android app version 5.51.50 can take advantage of this option. However, Google has yet to formalize the arrival of this feature, it is better to say that this is just a test conducted with a small number of users before a larger rollout can take place.

Not all YouTube Music users are eligible to participate yet.

In its current version, YouTube’s implementation of live lyrics requires users to open the middle tab of the “Now Playing”screen, simply titled “Lyrics”. The lyrics are then displayed as easy-to-read text as the song progresses, with the important line in bold so the user can easily sing along.

For those who don’t know what we’re talking about by bringing up live lyrics, it’s about displaying the lyrics of a song in sync with the progress of said song in the app. Until now, YouTube Music users had to use a third-party service (such as MusixMatch) to take advantage of a similar feature. Once this option becomes available to everyone, this will no longer be necessary. That being said, no one knows whether the American giant will decide to limit this feature to paid subscribers only or not.

The platform’s main competitors – Spotify and Apple Music – have long offered this capability, leaving YouTube Music and Amazon Music alone – in the West – not to offer it to their users.