Mic Drop: Spotify Is Going Full-On Karaoke

Spotify is many of our go-to’s for music, videos, and podcasts, and the popular streaming platform just dropped a new feature that allows users to sing along to their favorite song.

Spotify rolled out a feature that shows lyrics to users on most mediums like smartphones, tablets, desktops, and smart TVs that support the Spotify app. Now, users can click a song of their choice, and if it’s popular enough, they can play lyrics in real-time while channeling their inner karaoke superstar.

The Lyrics feature could mean that Spotify is a new solution for the karaoke industry worldwide. Spotify first tested the feature in 2019 within a small group of users. After considerable success within the small group, Spotify rolled out Lyrics in southeast Asia, India, and Latin America. It wasn’t until Nov 18 that North America had access to Spotify Lyrics.

Although this is an excellent move for Spotify, its competition, Apple Music, already had the lyrics feature for a few years now. Both features are exactly the same in terms of real-time lyric displays, but the hype surrounds Spotify since it’s finally meeting up with its competitor.

The new Spotify Lyrics feature could be a negative for karaoke businesses, which use large screens to display song lyrics in clubs and bars. Now, these karaoke hubs could change the way they do business by using the Spotify app on smart TVs for karaoke lyrics, which would typically come from a machine that can cost anywhere from $500 to $5,000.

However, Spotify or Apple Music doesn’t allow the user to turn off the vocals to songs, meaning that users have to sing over the original vocals in a sort of lackluster duet. But, this could change soon. Last fall, Spotify began chatting about another new and potential feature that allows the user to turn down the vocals on a song, but this hasn’t made its way to the public yet.

With modern technology comes the divide between karaoke machines and all-in-one home devices and apps like Smule, which allows users to record solo or group performances. Interestingly, karaoke machines began to decline when smartphones and tablets began to take off in the late 2000s.

The Smule app became incredibly useful for music fans when the pandemic hit; it allowed users to have a fun and carefree night with friends and family. And now that Spotify recently dropped its Lyrics feature, this might mean that apps will make karaoke clubs and bars go out of business unless they install smart TVs to display Spotify Lyrics.