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Spotify for Desktop to Gain Musixmatch Lyrics Integration Soon

Popular music streaming service Spotify and Musixmatch, the world’s largest catalogue of officially licensed song lyrics (not new to MacStories readers), have announced that Spotify for desktop will soon get the ability to natively display lyrics from Musixmatch in the media player.

Rolling out to desktop users “soon”, Spotify will receive a Lyrics button in the playing bar that, with one click, will bring up on-time lyrics powered by Musixmatch. According to Spotify, users will also be able to search for lyrics in the Explore section – Musixmatch has long featured a search option in its own mobile apps, letting users look up combination of words and sentences to find songs they remember via text.

Previously, Musixmatch was one of the most popular apps in Spotify’s App Finder for desktop users, which ties in to other news from today’s announcements. Spotify is “phasing out” apps from the App Finder and is advising developers to implement the Web API and mobile SDKs, launched last year. Curiously enough, the second most popular app from the App Finder was TuneWiki – another service to display lyrics for Spotify songs – but only Musixmatch will be getting the official integration treatment as part of the deal. According to the Spotify developer blog, “ the update will gradually roll out from today, starting with a smaller percentage of new and existing users”.

I covered Musixmatch in the past, and I often noticed how the lack of official lyrics was one of biggest weaknesses of modern music streaming services. I find Spotify’s decision to integrate with Musixmatch extremely smart, and I hope that this will lead to lyrics on mobile devices as well.

On iOS, Musixmatch can plug into Apple’s Music app directly without any manual interaction (especially impressive with the iOS 8 widget), but it requires a Shazam-like scanning process for any other source of audio. Building Musixmatch into the Spotify mobile player would considerably enhance the visibility and usefulness of Musixmatch, and I can’t wait to see if iOS and Android will follow today’s desktop news.

For more details, check out the Spotify blog.

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Federico is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of MacStories, where he writes about Apple with a focus on apps, developers, iPad, and iOS productivity. He founded MacStories in April 2009 and has been writing about Apple since. Federico is also the co-host of AppStories, a weekly podcast exploring the world of apps, Unwind, a fun exploration of media and more, and NPC: Next Portable Console, a show about portable gaming and the handheld revolution.

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