Spotify tests the streaming of live lyrics for U.S. users

So there you are streaming some tunes on Spotify and as you sing along, you find yourself making up the words since you don't know the correct lyrics to these tunes. And that might not matter except that your friends, family, and other bystanders are nearby laughing at you. The days of such embarrassment might soon come to an end. According to Engadget, Spotify is testing the streaming of live lyrics in the U.S.

The music streamer does have a history of trying different implementations to include lyrics with its music streams. One such attempt came to an end in 2016 when Spotify 86'd a partnership with Italy's Musixmatch. Spotify then turned to Genius; the latter delivered cards with Spotify's streams that showed song lyrics and trivia related to each tune. These "Beyond the Lyrics" card will disappear if Spotify decides to offer its U.S. subscribers live lyrics.

The feature has already been available for Spotify users in 27 countries including Brazil, Mexico, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Thailand, India, South Korea and others. Yet, the U.S. is now only part of an A/B test that Spotify is using to see how much demand for this feature there is the states. The company had previously said that live lyrics is a widely requested feature.

In a statement emailed to Engadget, Spotify said, "We can confirm we’re currently testing our lyrics feature to a select number of users in the US. At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve our user experience. Some of those tests end up paving the way for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning. We don’t have any further news to share at this time."

The lyrics feature found in 27 countries and being tested in the U.S. are provided once again by Musixmatch. Offering live lyrics could help Spotify maintain its lead as the world's largest music streamer with 248 million monthly listeners as of September. Of that total, 113 million listeners have paid for the premium version of the streamer with the balance using the ad-supported free version.

The premium version of Spotify allows users to download music for replay later (even when offline), listen to music with no ads, enjoy any song, and skip over an unlimited number of songs. The cost is $9.99 per month for an individual subscription following a two month free trial. A student account is $4.99 per month after a one month free trial, and a family subscription including up to six members, is $14.99 after a one month free trial.