First spotted by 9to5Google, Spotify lyrics on the Nest Hub are available to both Free and Premium users. The lyrics button appears next to the heart/favorite button on the bottom right corner of the screen when viewing fullscreen media controls. Tapping this button replaces the background image with real-time lyrics synced with the track. The auto-scrolling text highlights the current vocal line at the center of the screen. If there’s no vocal but only music, you’ll see a beamed musical notation. Spotify also shows the upcoming lines of the lyrics towards the bottom of the screen, underneath the controls and progress bar. This helps when you’re singing along to a song while looking at the lyrics on your smart display. You’ll have an idea what the next verse of the song is. Once enabled, lyrics remain turned on for as long as you you don’t manually disable it. So changing tracks on your Nest Hub will not turn off lyrics. As a song comes to an end, Spotify notes that lyrics are “Licensed & Provided by MusixMatch,” the same provider as on other platforms.
Spotify rolls out real-time lyrics to Nest Hub
Real-time lyrics on Spotify aren’t new. The music streaming biggie has had the feature for more than two years now. But it only arrived in the US last November. Thankfully, the company didn’t take too long to roll it out to smart displays. Apart from phones, TVs, and laptops, smart displays are one of the best devices for listening to music. So it’s logical for music streaming services to bring their best features to these devices. Google’s now-discontinued music service Play Music introduced real-time lyrics to smart displays in late 2018, albeit users had to manually ask Google Assistant for lyrics. Unfortunately, the succeeding service, YouTube Music, didn’t offer the same ability. You do get static lyrics on YouTube Music mobile apps for Android and iOS, as well as on the web. But not on smart displays. Spotify is now filling in that gap. Spotify lyrics appear to be already rolling out widely on the Nest Hub. The Nest Hub Max and other Google Assistant Smart Displays should also be picking it up shortly. If the feature hasn’t landed on your unit yet, watch out for it in the coming days.
