YouTube Music have added real-time lyrics to their mobile app. This comes in new efforts to compete with their rivals; Spotify, and Apple Music. Powered by Musixmatch now YouTube Music users will be able to sing along.
To keep on track with other streaming platforms, Spotify and Apple Music, YouTube have introduced real-time lyrics to all of their mobile users. From the 10th April 2023, YouTube Music have updated their app pages on both Google Play and the App Store. It now states they offer “song lyrics, so you can sing along to your favourites.”
The lyrics, like other platforms, are sourced from Musixmatch. This is the typical lyric sourcing website, and is highly accurate. Apple Music introduced lyrics in 2019. Their lyrics move in time with the song, and show animations of the words on the screen. They didn’t stop there either. Since then, Apple Music have launched Apple Music Sing a complete karaoke app.
Apple Music Sing allows users to sing along to their favourite songs, while changing the vocals within the song. It doesn’t appear YouTube Music will be launching a karaoke app any time soon, however you could argue it isn’t really needed. If the lyrics are on the main app, why add more apps to the market? It seems a bit excessive.
Spotify lyrics came slightly after Apple Music. They introduced real-time lyrics in 2020. Then following this, in 2021, they partnered with the well known Musixmatch to bring more lyrics to the platform and therefore enhance the user experience. All platforms have large libraries, so it isn’t likely every song will ever reach a stage where they have lyrics available.
However, the more platforms grow, the more they can push these features, and on both Spotify and Apple Music already there are countless tracks containing lyrics. In November 2022 YouTube Music reached 80 million paid subscribers on their Premium platform. A number which has grown significantly over the years the platform has been around.
Apple Music announced they’d hit 60 million subscribers in 2019, but haven’t since released any statistics outlining their subscribers. Considering YouTube Music hasn’t been a platform for the same time as Apple Music, they’re doing well for themselves. Gaining a lot of interest, but then, that likely comes from their parent company YouTube.
Nonetheless, if you want to sing-a-long to your favourite music, or artists, you’re in luck. You can access this across major streaming platforms, so you could argue it doesn’t matter which one you choose. Lyric videos have been popular on YouTube since the dawn of time, so it’s great to see they’ve taken the idea to their music platform.
