Have you ever loved seeing the lyrics to your favourite songs on Spotify? You may need to begin paying for that privilege quickly.
Up till now, each free and paid customers of Spotify have loved entry to its lyrics characteristic, which follows together with a track so you’ll be able to lastly perceive what your favourite singer or rapper is definitely saying. It’s a fantastic characteristic that the corporate dropped at its music streaming app shortly after Apple rolled out Stay Lyrics for Apple Music.
Nonetheless, it seems that Spotify is perhaps rethinking who will get entry to lyrics. As noticed by The Verge, some customers on the free plan are beginning to discover that lyrics have been put behind a paywall. As an alternative of seeing the lyrics to a track, they’re now being proven an advert saying that they will get entry to lyrics in the event that they pay for certainly one of Spotify’s Premium plans.
CJ Stanley, Spotify’s co-head of worldwide communications, confirmed in a press release to the outlet that the corporate is testing placing lyrics behind a paywall with Spotify Premium.
“At Spotify, we routinely conduct a lot of exams, a few of these exams find yourself paving the best way for our broader consumer expertise and others serve solely as an necessary studying. We don’t have any additional information to share at the moment.” Stanley later adopted up so as to add that “In line with our commonplace practices, we’re at the moment testing this with a restricted variety of customers in a pair of markets.”
So, it seems that the check might merely be that — a check. There’s no affirmation from the corporate that it’s going to undergo with making the lyrics characteristic unique to its Premium plan. Within the meantime, nevertheless, some free customers are going to be dwelling in that world anyway.
I actually hope Spotify doesn’t undergo with this. It’s one factor in the event that they launched the characteristic as one thing that was solely accessible to Premium customers. Nonetheless, to launch it for everybody, get individuals to begin anticipating it, after which lock it behind a paywall — that’s a crappy factor to do to its clients. I can’t consider a time when competing providers like Apple Music or YouTube Music have carried out the identical, so it seems like this one is a case the place Spotify tried one thing out as a “check” in public, caught the backlash early, after which canceled it earlier than it bought too huge.
I’ll personally stick to Apple Music. Along with having Stay Lyrics longer than Spotify, the music streaming app additionally gives the Karaoke characteristic, which helps you to sing alongside together with your favourite songs whereas chopping the vocals out — it really works surprisingly effectively. It additionally has Lossless Audio and Spatial Audio, options Spotify has been promising however failing to ship for years.
Hopefully, Spotify doesn’t give customers another reason to modify away from it. Not less than it lately rolled out its AI DJ to extra individuals lately.
