Spotify announced changes to its built-in song lyrics feature on Wednesday. The updates include making lyrics translations available globally, offering the ability to view lyrics offline, and moving the feature to a new location within the app.
These changes follow other adjustments Spotify has made to lyrics over the years. The company hopes to leverage the feature as a tool to encourage free users to become subscribers. This strategy began in 2024 when Spotify initially tried to put lyrics behind a paywall. It later loosened this restriction after numerous user complaints. Now, the company hopes the new offline lyrics feature, which will be offered exclusively to Premium subscribers, will motivate users to upgrade.
In the new design, lyrics will appear directly beneath the album artwork or the short, looping video that plays with the music. Spotify moved lyrics to this more prominent position after user tests indicated it increased engagement with the feature. Users can still share favorite lyrics snippets to social media from the Now Playing view.
This feature, called lyric previews, will roll out globally to both free and paid customers on iOS and Android apps for smartphones and tablets.
Additionally, lyrics translations, first introduced in 2022, will now be globally available. This expands from the 25 markets supported last year. When translations are available, users can tap a translate icon on the lyrics card to see the translation appear beneath the original text. The translation will default to the device’s set language.
In past years, Spotify was slow to roll out lyrics across its app, largely due to licensing issues. After years of consumer demand, the company finally rolled out real-time lyrics to global users in 2021. This followed a smaller launch in a couple of dozen markets the year prior and tests dating back to 2019. Before this, Spotify had partnered with Genius for a “behind the lyrics” feature, which combined partial lyrics with song trivia.