YouTube Music app now shows lyrics during playback

The feature is only available on the apps and not on the web player, although YouYube said it would be available on desktop soon.

Listeners can now view lyrics by tapping the ‘i’ button while a song is playing. However, real-time lyrics aren’t supported yet and users have to scroll through manually to view them.

YouTube joins Apple Music and Spotify who added lyrics on their platforms last year. Apple Music has an official partnership with Genius, while Spotify uses Musixmatch. YouTube has opted to use LyricFind, accused of stealing lyrics from Genius last year, as its main partner.

YouTube says it receives lyrics from LyricFind on a daily basis, but there isn’t a specific time frame for when a song will get its lyrics. Lyrics appear for ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ by Taylor Swift but none are currently available for recent albums such as Childish Gambino’s 3.15.2020.

Song lyrics are now a popular service offered by music streaming platforms and YouTube may have some catching up to do on this front. The streaming platform has more than 20 million paying subscribers, while Spotify and Apple Music have reported over 124 million and 60 million, respectively.