Apple Hiring Lyrics Curation Team for Apple Music

[MacRumors]

Apple is hiring a Lyrics Curation Manager and Lyrics Curators, presumably to work on the new Apple Music feature in iOS 10 that provides song lyrics alongside each Apple Music song that is playing.

First noticed by MusicBusinessWorldwide, the job listings are for the Content Curation team, responsible for "maintaining the very best user experience possible around content."

We're looking for a manager to lead a team of lyrics curators with excellent writing skills, music knowledge, and attention to detail. Passion for technology and a will to question the current workflows with the mindset to improve tools and processes. General understanding, love, and ideally, experience in writing lyrics.

For the non-manager positions, Apple is seeking candidates with competency in Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, German, and Spanish, so at least some of the Lyrics team will focus on translating song lyrics into additional languages. Other job requirements include the ability to "accurately and quickly transcribe lyrics," "superlative writing skills" and a willingness to learn "new and complicated tools and processes."

In Apple Music in iOS 10, scrolling down on the "Now Playing" window brings up an option to show song lyrics on most Apple Music songs. Lyrics are still a work in progress and are not available for all songs, especially new releases.

It is not clear if Apple's lyric transcriptions are done in-house, but given the sheer number of songs on Apple Music, it seems likely Apple has partner services with lyrics provided by a company specializing in lyric transcription or directly from music labels.

The new Apple Music, which has seen a significant redesign in iOS 10, will launch to the public this fall.

Article Link: Apple Hiring Lyrics Curation Team for Apple Music

 

[cmChimera]

I like this feature but wish they could partner with Genius for it.

 

[Asarien]

Nice. Finally, a feature I actually want being implemented.

 

[Avieshek]

I wonder, if Hindi-Sanskrit would be added.

 

[BSben]

Hiring now for a feature that is supposed to work in a few weeks time. Seems a little late.

 

[1applerules1]

Now I can finally understand what Rihanna and Sia are saying!

 

[crapforks]

There are so many features I would like to see implemented/tweaked before this. I don't think AM is quite the mess that these boards make it out to be, but adding lyrics should probably not be as high a priority as it seemingly is.

 

[S.B.G]

Adding lyrics to songs like this is a welcomed feature for all music services IMO.

 

[v0lume4]

I like this feature but wish they could partner with Genius for it.

Agreed. Lyrics are cool, however Spotify already has lyrics AND Genius integration for many of their songs.

 

[tonyr6]

What about songs with little or no lyrics like some EDM?

 

[mxmgodin]

It is not clear if Apple's lyric transcriptions are done in-house

I thought they announced they were partnering with Genius or Musixmatch... I guess I imagined that

 

[Asarien]

Now I can finally understand what Rihanna and Sia are saying!

They aren't saying anything.

 

[cylack]

I use the free app Singer Song Reader for auto importation of lyrics into iTunes on OS X.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Spotify had synchronized lyrics for over a year on desktop. Then they dropped it a few months ago, saying that they were working on improving it. Made no sense - the feature was working pretty well, and then to just not have it anymore?

Maybe Apple adding this lyrics feature (which seems to lack any synchronization from what I can tell) will lead Spotify to redeploying their synchronized lyrics...

 

[Robert.Walter]

Wham: Two left feet have got no rhythm...

Elvis: I gave to you a tie clasp, but that was just a lie...

 

[mxmgodin]

Spotify had synchronized lyrics for over a year on desktop. Then they dropped it a few months ago, saying that they were working on improving it. Made no sense - the feature was working pretty well, and then to just not have it anymore?

Maybe Apple adding this lyrics feature (which seems to lack any synchronization from what I can tell) will lead Spotify to redeploying their synchronized lyrics...

Oh, I hadn't used the desktop client in a while, I hadn't noticed they had removed the feature. That's disappointing. I hope they add it back soon, synchronized or not, it's a feature that's really nice to have.

 

[Robert.Walter]

Spotify had synchronized lyrics for over a year on desktop. Then they dropped it a few months ago, saying that they were working on improving it. Made no sense - the feature was working pretty well, and then to just not have it anymore?

Maybe Apple adding this lyrics feature (which seems to lack any synchronization from what I can tell) will lead Spotify to redeploying their synchronized lyrics...

They tried to cut costs by firing their human to text transcribers?

 

[laurim]

amazing it has taken this long. Ever since the start of iTunes, I have occasionally copy and pasted lyrics into the spot for lyrics in the meta data of songs. I never understood why this wasn't done by the content creators already. I've started using an app to pull in song lyrics but since the lyrics are basically crowd-sourced, they often don't match the song so I would love a professionally-done lyrics service. Although still not sure I want to subscribe to Apple Music to get it.

 

[HopefulHumanist]

Hiring now for a feature that is supposed to work in a few weeks time. Seems a little late.

A lot of lyrics are already present. I assume these hires are to fill out the songs that are still missing lyrics and keep up to date with the numerous releases coming every week.

Agreed. Lyrics are cool, however Spotify already has lyrics AND Genius integration for many of their songs.

It's not ideal but since Genius has access to the Music Library on iOS, whenever you're playing a song, it can show you the lyrics for it within its app without you searching for it. It's a nice workaround until all the songs in Apple Music have lyrics data.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

They tried to cut costs by firing their human to text transcribers?

The actual content was provided by the community... there were several songs I added and synchronized the lyrics for myself. So they didn't lay anyone off by doing this.

My understanding is it was somehow done in collaboration with MusicXMatch (not sure if I got their name right) and the terms of their agreement came to an end. Publicly all Spotify said was that they needed to take it down so they could improve it, but there's speculation that MusicXMatch had something to do with it coming down.

 

[CFreymarc]

Have a "follow the bouncing ball" option!

 

[2457282]

I use the free app Singer Song Reader for auto importation of lyrics into iTunes on OS X.

I use BeaTunes. I like that it not only does Lyrics, but BPM, Key, Mood, etc.

 

[Waxhead138]

There are so many features I would like to see implemented/tweaked before this. I don't think AM is quite the mess that these boards make it out to be, but adding lyrics should probably not be as high a priority as it seemingly is.

I agree about the tweaking....for instance: I currently do not suscribe to AM. I painstakingly put art in for every album that itunes wouldnt naturally curate art for. Now, in Itunes (on my phone) although I dont suscribe to AM, Apple has force fed AM album art, or in many cases promo / bio picks for an artist when I found my own. Its HIGHLY Irritating. I dealt with doing that on my own....just for Apple to basically reverse it in playlists that have no ties to any cloud service at all. This is probably more an itunes complaint, but its damn irritating. Even though Ive never suscribed to AM, even the free trial....this still occured. And never did occur for me prior to the launch of AM.

 

[RedOrchestra]

Lyrics ... for the lonesome hearts club, I guess ... makes me think of Elvis ...

Are you lonesome tonight,
Do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart?

 

[robbysibrahim]

To clarify, this new iOS 10 feature doesn't give you lyrics that were never there. It only displays to you the lyrics you had saved in the track's metadata just like iTunes has done for years (under Get Info).

I recently used a lovely app "Get Lyrical" to auto-tag my entire iTunes library with lyrics. Because I use iCloud Music Library, lyrics now show up for all songs on my iPhone running iOS 10 beta. It's great!

This new lyrics curation team is doing the same thing; finding good lyrics and adding them to the metadata in Apple's own Apple Music library. It won't add them to your owned tracks. Do what I did above for that.