Amid concerns of an Apple consumer boycott in China and India, the tech giant quietly announced the expansion of Apple Music song lyrics to seven further countries.
As of this week, Apple Music song lyrics functionality will be available in seven major additional markets meaning music lovers will be able to use the capability for both streaming and searching for songs. The feature was rolled out over four continents, with users in Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Mexico, New Zealand and South Africa now able to access lyric support having previously been limited to the UK, Australia, Canada and the United States.
How the feature works
The song lyrics feature debuted with iOS 10 in 2016 whilst the search by lyrics function went live with the launch of iOS 12 in 2018. The search by feature allows users to type in segments of a song, which is then matched with Apple Music’s library to locate that particular title.
Apple Music lyrics features both a search feature that allows users to identify song titles by typing in a relevant grouping of words as well as song lyrics which appear onscreen.
Spotify hosted integrated with lyrics and teamed with information provider Genius in 2016 meaning that Apple were somewhat late to the song lyrics game. That said, they have more than made up for it over the course of the past year having partnered with Genius in October in a bid to expand the feature’s lyrics catalogue. Now, in addition to hosted lyrics, the collaboration of Apple Music and Genius means they are now the information provider’s official web-based music player.