YouTube Music Seems To Be Rolling Out Real-Time Lyrics To Android Users
Along with Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music, YouTube Music is among the world's most widely used music streaming platforms. While YouTube Music has received several feature upgrades over the past few years, some may still believe the platform offers a limited set of features compared to the competition.
Among the major cons of YouTube Music includes the lack of a dedicated app for desktop computers, lower streaming bitrates for both paid and free users, and the fact that users on the free tier don't get the option to play music in the background.
Even as YouTube Music users continue to deal with these issues, Google is on the verge of addressing a major complaint YouTube users had about the platform — the lack of real-time lyrics support. Recent posts on YouTube Music subreddits indicate that Google has started to roll out real-time lyrics support to select YouTube Music users. Given that Google has been testing the real-time lyrics feature on YouTube Music for the past several months, the official rollout of the feature shouldn't come as a surprise.
While it is unclear if the iOS version of YouTube Music has started receiving the feature, screenshots posted by users indicate that some users on version 5.51.50 of the Android app have started receiving the feature. However, given that Google is yet to officially announce this new feature, it is safe to assume that the feature is currently being tested among a select bunch of users before a wider rollout occurs.
Not available for all YouTube Music users yet
In its current version, YouTube's implementation of the real-time lyrics requires users to pull up the middle tab of the "Now Playing" screen. Lyrics are then displayed in easy-to-read text, and as the song progresses, the relevant line is highlighted in bold — making it easy for users to sing along.
If you're still unclear about what this real-time lyrics feature entails, it essentially showcases the lyrics in sync as it is played back on the app. For a long time now, YouTube Music users have had to rely on paid third-party services (like MusixMatch) to enable real-time lyrics support. Once this feature rolls out to the broader subset of YouTube Music users, this workaround will no longer be required. That being said, it remains unclear at this time whether Google will restrict the real-time lyrics feature to its paid user base.
YouTube Music's chief competitors — Spotify and Apple Music — received this ability a long time ago, leaving YouTube Music and Amazon Music as the major music streaming platforms in the West to not have the ability to show real-time lyrics.