The streaming giant is taking steps to make users better at karaoke with a new feature that will help fans everywhere learn their favorite songs.
Last November, Spotify began testing a new tool that would offer listeners access to song lyrics in real-time. The company has remained tight-lipped about the effort, but this week, the feature is being made available in 26 countries. It marks the first time lyrics have been offered in 22 of the 26 markets, as only Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Mexico had some form of lyrics support in the past via other providers.
The new feature is possible thanks to a partnership between Spotify and Musixmatch, which was also involved in testing. The terms of the deal between the two companies are not public, but it’s probably similar to the ongoing collaboration between Apple Music and Genius.
Spotify listeners can access the new feature by tapping “lyrics” at the bottom of the “now playing” screen. The lyrics will then appear in the language in which the song is sung—no word about translation.
The following markets can now access the new lyrics feature: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, El Salvador, Uruguay, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong.
North America and Europe will need to wait a bit longer for the new feature, but we imagine the tool will be available in the near future.
In a time when culture is evolving faster than ever, Emmure vocalist Frankie Palmeri is sharing his regrets over past lyrical choices.
When Frankie Palmeri’s band Emmure burst onto the music scene in the late 2000s, nobody was ready for the band’s brutally honest lyricism and devastatingly heavy sound. Throughout multiple releases, many under the Victory Records banner, Palmeri wrote about heartache and the anger he felt toward the world around him without consideration for how his word choices might impact listeners. He spoke of murdering exes, hurting his enemies, and having sex with his listeners’ girlfriends with total disregard for how his art might make people feel.
But that was another time. The world has changed a lot since Emmure burst onto the scene, and the affinity for ultraviolent, highly-profane lyricism fans of heavy music once enjoyed has waned. Some may see that as a bad thing, but others believe that creating music with more awareness of how things impact listeners makes the heavier areas of music more accessible to more people.
This week, Palmeri took to Twitter to renounce his past lyricism. In a multi-tweet post, the Emmure frontman wrote:
“Hanging out with someone who only listens to metalcore made [me] realize why regular people with healthy neuroplasticity don’t fuck with that genre of music and gravitate towards pop/rap. Talk about a fucking unnecessary onslaught of bullshit emotions.
“Trust me when I say; I emotionally and spiritually reject almost every lyric I’ve ever written. It all stems from material pain, a fragile ego, an inability to cope. It’s unfortunate anyone has ever identified with any of what I’ve said in my music. A lot [of] people are/were hurting.”
Frankie Palmeri via Twitter
You can view Palmeri’s original tweets below.
It’s hard to know what the lead Palmeri to make this announcement, but rumors of a new Emmure record being on the way have circled the internet for months. If so, Palmeri’s comments could signal a departure from the group’s previous efforts, which fans may or may not embrace.
More importantly, it’s is refreshing to see an artist reconsider their past actions through the lens of cultural acceptance and emotional maturity. Palmeri once wrote, “ask your girl what my d-ck tastes like,” and now he’s apologizing for it. That’s character development, and we could use more of that in the metalcore world.
Marketing 101: Make your lyrics easy to find online
Say what you will about how the age of streaming has decluttered the life of music fans by doing away with the need for physical releases, but ask someone to use those same services to learn the lyrics of their new favorite song and your question will be met with silence. Between Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, Rdio, and Tidal there is not a single platform that allows users to follow along with a song by reading the track’s lyrics. Those wishing to do that music first open an internet browser, Google a few keywords, and then-9 times out of 10-they will find a non-artist owned site to read from. Any ad money generated from this activity goes to the owner of the site that posted the lyrics and not the artists who wrote the lyrics in the first place.
This was rarely the case when CDs were popular. People talk about holding the album in their hands and how the presence of a physical product gave more value to the fact money was being spent, but for me the best part of owning any record was pouring over the lyrics contained within the meticulously crafted booklet included with each album. When I bought a record and no words were within, I was upset. With enough spins you can learn the words to pretty much any song, but there is something far more meaningful about being able to read and understand them from the first or second listen. It frees the mind to focus more on the music as a whole, allowing listening the chance to properly experience each rise and fall as the artist intended, which in turn gives more meaning to the lyrics.
Regardless of how famous or unknown they may be, every artist should make it a point to post their lyrics online through a site or page they control. If not for the sake of controlling the conversation around your content online, then for the sake of fans new and old. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve discovered a promising new band online, only to become instantly discouraged when there was no place for me to read and decipher the content of their music. Fans want to be able to sing along with the songs they love, regardless of whether or not the words are easy to learn (I’m looking at you, Korean Migos), and when artists do not take the responsibility to educate fans about their art it either gets posted by a third party who then profits for no good reason, or it goes uncovered, as is the case for many smaller bands.
Platforms like Purevolume and Bandcamp offer the ability to add lyrics to streams. They understand that part of the music discovery experience is learning to sing along. They know that once someone finds an artist they feel a connection to they will immediately want to know everything they can about that talent, starting with the words behind the music. They want to see what it is about the words that connect with their life, or what it is about the hook that makes them feel inspired. When no lyrics are immediately available, there is a high risk of quick burnout from new new listeners. An artist’s music may be strong, but in an age as flooded with quality artist as today’s music market it requires a lot more than sheer talent to hold the attention the average music consumer. There needs to be a real emotional connection, and while that may begin with the music, it’s often sealed with the words themselves.
Start today. Don’t wait another minute. Chances are high if you’re an artist reading this now you already have some, if not all of your lyrics stored somewhere on your computer or mobile device. Log onto you numerous streaming accounts, as well as your personal website, and post those lyrics as soon as you are able. Afterwards, promote the presence of these lyrics and invite fans to learn the words before your next show. You can also use this approach for regional marketing, challenging various cities to sing along to singles louder than other cities, or simply encouraging a quick refresher of what’s in store before your big show. Whatever you do, get those lyrics online. Please.
Say what you will about how the age of streaming has decluttered the life of music fans by doing away with the need for physical releases, but ask someone to use those same services to learn the lyrics of their new favorite song and your question will be met with silence. Between Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, Rdio, and Tidal there is not a single platform that allows users to follow along with a song by reading the track’s lyrics. Those wishing to do that music first open an internet browser, Google a few keywords, and then-9 times out of 10-they will find a non-artist owned site to read from. Any ad money generated from this activity goes to the owner of the site that posted the lyrics and not the artists who wrote the lyrics in the first place.
This was rarely the case when CDs were popular. People talk about holding the album in their hands and how the presence of a physical product gave more value to the fact money was being spent, but for me the best part of owning any record was pouring over the lyrics contained within the meticulously crafted booklet included with each album. When I bought a record and no words were within, I was upset. With enough spins you can learn the words to pretty much any song, but there is something far more meaningful about being able to read and understand them from the first or second listen. It frees the mind to focus more on the music as a whole, allowing listening the chance to properly experience each rise and fall as the artist intended, which in turn gives more meaning to the lyrics.
Regardless of how famous or unknown they may be, every artist should make it a point to post their lyrics online through a site or page they control. If not for the sake of controlling the conversation around your content online, then for the sake of fans new and old. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve discovered a promising new band online, only to become instantly discouraged when there was no place for me to read and decipher the content of their music. Fans want to be able to sing along with the songs they love, regardless of whether or not the words are easy to learn (I’m looking at you, Korean Migos), and when artists do not take the responsibility to educate fans about their art it either gets posted by a third party who then profits for no good reason, or it goes uncovered, as is the case for many smaller bands.
Platforms like Purevolume and Bandcamp offer the ability to add lyrics to streams. They understand that part of the music discovery experience is learning to sing along. They know that once someone finds an artist they feel a connection to they will immediately want to know everything they can about that talent, starting with the words behind the music. They want to see what it is about the words that connect with their life, or what it is about the hook that makes them feel inspired. When no lyrics are immediately available, there is a high risk of quick burnout from new new listeners. An artist’s music may be strong, but in an age as flooded with quality artist as today’s music market it requires a lot more than sheer talent to hold the attention the average music consumer. There needs to be a real emotional connection, and while that may begin with the music, it’s often sealed with the words themselves.
Start today. Don’t wait another minute. Chances are high if you’re an artist reading this now you already have some, if not all of your lyrics stored somewhere on your computer or mobile device. Log onto you numerous streaming accounts, as well as your personal website, and post those lyrics as soon as you are able. Afterwards, promote the presence of these lyrics and invite fans to learn the words before your next show. You can also use this approach for regional marketing, challenging various cities to sing along to singles louder than other cities, or simply encouraging a quick refresher of what’s in store before your big show. Whatever you do, get those lyrics online. Please.
The only thing more annoying than bandwagon fans may be bandwagon haters. People who feel it is their duty as fans of a particular sound or genre to tear down whoever is currently dominating the charts because they believe it makes them unique or edgy in some way. We who embrace the hitmakers know better, as we understand there is a reason certain artists see their star shoot into the stratosphere while others must work incredibly hard for every tiny bit of success they achieve. The reasons for this are as numerous as grains of sand on the beach, but one thing that is almost always true about real music stars, and by that I mean those who are able to hold the public’s attention across multiple albums, is that they always find a way to connect with people in a way that feels personal.
To be clear, what I just said is far easier to grasp than it is to recreate. We all follow our own paths in this life, experiencing practically every aspect of existence in a way that is wholly unique to ourselves, yet for some reason there are certain songs and/or artists who have the power to make us feel as though we are part of something bigger than ourselves. Call it a community, or a culture, or a way of life, but there is something to the biggest material in history that connects with people in a deeply personal way. You may have never experienced the situation being described in the song, and you may never know the story that inspired the lyrics, but something about the way emotion is being expressed cuts through the noise and strikes you right in your soul. It moves you, as it does others, and as soon as it’s over we long to feel that connection again. That is the sign you’ve found something truly great in music, and it’s something that is completely achievable by pretty much every artist working today. That is, if they work hard enough.
The big star of the moment is Adele, and by now you’ve no doubt heard her single “Hello” between one and one-hundred times in your daily life. Her music is everywhere right now, and her new single “When We Were Young” seems poised to push her exposure even further. The production on these tracks is undeniably gorgeous, and Adele’s powerful voice is something that will be praised for decades to come, but what makes these songs work at Top 40 radio and beyond has little do with those factors and far more to do with the feeling you get when the music plays. Adele, like Drake on tracks like “Hotline Bling” or “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” has the power to make you miss people and situations you have never actually known. Something in the way the music compliments the lyrics, which are typically pulled from a deeply personal place, creates an atmosphere of turmoil and heartache that listeners take upon themselves to connect with events in their own lives. It doesn’t matter whether or not the events that inspired the song are the same as the events the lyrics are being applied to by the listeners, and it never will. All that matters is that the performer is able to capture a feeling, or perhaps a better description would be a sense of being, that translates on a massive scale.
What I’m trying to say is that the reason these artists skyrocket into the music stratosphere while others fight over lower chart positions is because people feel like the know them. When you hear the music of Adele and Drake, or even smaller acts like The Hotelier or Modern Baseball, you feel as if you are hearing an update from a close friend about what has been going on in their life since you last spoke. It’s entertaining, yes, but it’s so much more than that as well. You long for those updates, and when they arrive you click play with all the hope in the world that you and this person or group, whom you’ve never met, have been experiencing similar situations in life. You hope there is something in there story that relates to your own, and that kind of connection is incredibly hard to break. Even if the quality of the music begins to suffer, and the radio songs can’t crack the top 10, people who have connected to an artist on an emotional level will continue to follow them for as long as they are able.
I cannot tell you how to create songs that connect with people the way the latest singles from Drake and Adele do, but that is okay because writing material like that should not be your goal after reading this post. Writing music that would work for Drake or Adele is not guaranteed to work for you, at all. Your goal, or better yet your mission, should be to find a way to create the music you want to make in such a way that it connects with people like the material released by your musical peers. It’s not about copying someone else’s formula, but rather finding a way to tap into the same set of relatable emotions that has established countless artists as household names over the last hundred or so years of pop music. Even if you’re writing metal, the goal remains the same. You want to create something that is both personal and universal, which shares a part of you in a meaningful way while still allowing others to add their own meaning to the material. There is no recipe for that kind of creation, nor are the any guides I would suggest you spend time reading. The best way to make material like this is too simply keep creating, and in time you will learn to refine your skills. As your songwriting improves, so will the reach of your music, but you cannot allow yourself to get lost in thoughts of what a song could potentially be or do for you. As soon as you take your focus away from creating great songs that actually mean something to you, the artist, your chances of connecting with listeners begins to drop. Stay true to yourself and people will notice. It might take time, but that’s perfectly okay.
James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records. Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him on Twitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.
Say what you will about how the age of streaming has decluttered the life of music fans by doing away with the need for physical releases, but ask someone to use those same services to learn the lyrics of their new favorite song and your question will be met with silence. Between Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, Rdio, and Tidal there is not a single platform that allows users to follow along with a song by reading the track’s lyrics. Those wishing to do that music first open an internet browser, Google a few keywords, and then-9 times out of 10-they will find a non-artist owned site to read from. Any ad money generated from this activity goes to the owner of the site that posted the lyrics and not the artists who wrote the lyrics in the first place.
This was rarely the case when CDs were popular. People talk about holding the album in their hands and how the presence of a physical product gave more value to the fact money was being spent, but for me the best part of owning any record was pouring over the lyrics contained within the meticulously crafted booklet included with each album. When I bought a record and no words were within, I was upset. With enough spins you can learn the words to pretty much any song, but there is something far more meaningful about being able to read and understand them from the first or second listen. It frees the mind to focus more on the music as a whole, allowing listening the chance to properly experience each rise and fall as the artist intended, which in turn gives more meaning to the lyrics.
Regardless of how famous or unknown they may be, every artist should make it a point to post their lyrics online through a site or page they control. If not for the sake of controlling the conversation around your content online, then for the sake of fans new and old. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve discovered a promising new band online, only to become instantly discouraged when there was no place for me to read and decipher the content of their music. Fans want to be able to sing along with the songs they love, regardless of whether or not the words are easy to learn (I’m looking at you, Korean Migos), and when artists do not take the responsibility to educate fans about their art it either gets posted by a third party who then profits for no good reason, or it goes uncovered, as is the case for many smaller bands.
Platforms like Purevolume and Bandcamp offer the ability to add lyrics to streams. They understand that part of the music discovery experience is learning to sing along. They know that once someone finds an artist they feel a connection to they will immediately want to know everything they can about that talent, starting with the words behind the music. They want to see what it is about the words that connect with their life, or what it is about the hook that makes them feel inspired. When no lyrics are immediately available, there is a high risk of quick burnout from new new listeners. An artist’s music may be strong, but in an age as flooded with quality artist as today’s music market it requires a lot more than sheer talent to hold the attention the average music consumer. There needs to be a real emotional connection, and while that may begin with the music, it’s often sealed with the words themselves.
Start today. Don’t wait another minute. Chances are high if you’re an artist reading this now you already have some, if not all of your lyrics stored somewhere on your computer or mobile device. Log onto you numerous streaming accounts, as well as your personal website, and post those lyrics as soon as you are able. Afterwards, promote the presence of these lyrics and invite fans to learn the words before your next show. You can also use this approach for regional marketing, challenging various cities to sing along to singles louder than other cities, or simply encouraging a quick refresher of what’s in store before your big show. Whatever you do, get those lyrics online. Please.
