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How to Use Apple Music Lyrics in iOS 10

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Apr 12, 2001
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One of the newest features in iOS 10's redesigned Apple Music app is the ability to view lyrics for your favorite songs. While the ability to quickly access song lyrics to learn the lines is helpful, the new feature may get lost in the midst of Apple Music's new look. We've put together a how-to guide to show you how to view lyrics for your songs.

First, you'll need to start playing a song. Once a song is playing, click on the song's banner, just above the Apple Music menu bar at the bottom, to open the song's individual card. From here, there are two methods to view lyrics.

Method One:

applemusiclyrics1-800x473.jpg

  1. Tap the "three dots" button in the bottom right corner. This brings up a menu overlay displaying options for the song, like adding it to a playlist or creating a station.
  2. Tap the "Lyrics" button below the "Share Song" option. Songs with available lyrics will have this option displayed, while songs without lyrics available will not.
  3. The lyrics will pop up in a separate translucent window that slides over the song window.
Method Two:

applemusiclyrics2-800x473.jpg

  1. Scroll down while in the song card.
  2. The lyrics toggle will be displayed directly beneath the song, right above the "Up Next" feature.
  3. Tap on "Show" to reveal the lyrics to your song.
Currently, lyrics are not available on all songs and albums, but Apple has been rapidly expanding the number of tracks with lyrics support throughout the beta testing period and coverage has become fairly broad in time for the public release.

Article Link: How to Use Apple Music Lyrics in iOS 10
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/ios-10-apple-music-lyrics/
It appears to require an Apple Music subscription, not merely Purchased or Matched music. I purchased the Hamilton soundtrack through the iTunes store, and I don't see any lyrics. Same for every other Purchased or Matched song I tried. The menu item is simply not there.
 
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If true that manually-added lyrics do not show up, then Apple devs are on crack. They obviously built this feature in some custom, non-standard way? Or was the way that iTunes stores lyrics non-standard? I hope this gets sorted out because problems like this should not exist.
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macfacts said:
Maybe Apple should improve the user interface for their music and messaging apps so tutorials aren't needed.
Click to expand...

These tutorials are appreciated by many people and help to drive ad dollars for MacRumors.
 
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To those asking about songs purchased vs Apple Music, lyrics are intellectual property that can be licensed separately from the song itself thus having a license to the song does not necessarily entitle you to see the lyrics too. Apple licensed the lyrics specifically in conjunction with Apple Music thus the access for subscribers. It's not an Apple conspiracy to force anyone onto AM, you can thank the music industry eeking out a few more dollars on format change grounds.
 
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The Lyrics option appears even if you have Apple Music switched off (as I do). So the feature is not an "Apple Music" feature. It's just part of the Music app (confused anyone?).

A lot of my iTunes songs don't have lyrics right now. I use iTunes Match so I would hope my imported CDs would get matched and lyrics added when available. I expected more popular artists to already have them, but I guess I don't listen to what Apple considers popular music. You can bet Drake and Beyoncé have Lyrics!

I like this idea and any effort to add the ability to share a snippet of Lyrics would be useful to me.

Next up:

* karaoke lyrics highlighting as you listen to the song within the music app

* auto-clean explicit songs by using lyrics (and karaoke feature) to automatically block out curse and other offensive words - allow user to customize the naughty words list.
 
Am3r1ca16 said:
I had lyric in my music because I did it manually via iTunes.now none of the lyric show up for my music.
I don't use apple music
Click to expand...

I had the same issue with manually curated album covers, and I don't subscribe to AMusic either. It randomly substituted whatever it feels like for album covers. More than annoying.

Edit: Manually curated in this case means for any album that ITunes didn't already have art for. Also: the music app substitutes art even in cases (sometimes) that ITunes was able to procure the cover without help.

It seems random, which makes it worse. For something that is supposed to be a personalized experience, options seemingly are being stripped left and right. Substituting artwork shouldn't happen at all.
 
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I tried viewing lyrics on iTunes the one with the brand new update and no lyrics show for any of my songs. It doesn't work in iTunes on your Mac.
 
I subscribe to iTunes Match (which technically doesn't seem to exist anymore) and none of my albums -- not the ones where I added lyrics myself nor any that I bought from Apple (including Hamilton, which is shown above with lyrics) -- shows an option to view lyrics. Apple should have put a big asterisk next to their announcement of the feature.
 
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Am3r1ca16 said:
They were fine in ios 9. Once I updated to ios 10 now they are all gone
Click to expand...

Maybe its even more random for some than others? If that makes sense? I'm still on IOS 9. I first noticed the problem a few months back...but I know for sure I didn't see it before the release of Apple Music.
 
Huh? "Hamilton: An American Musical", as opposed to what? Those inescapable LATVIAN musicals?
 
thisisnotmyname said:
To those asking about songs purchased vs Apple Music, lyrics are intellectual property that can be licensed separately from the song itself thus having a license to the song does not necessarily entitle you to see the lyrics too. Apple licensed the lyrics specifically in conjunction with Apple Music thus the access for subscribers. It's not an Apple conspiracy to force anyone onto AM, you can thank the music industry eeking out a few more dollars on format change grounds.
Click to expand...

To reuse an expression Tim Cook likes to use, this is bullcrap. For over a decade it's been possible to view manually entered lyrics into iTunes, and then in the iPhone. It was and still is possible to do this in iOS 9. If Apple were concerned about whether or not you have the rights to display lyrics, they would have "fixed" this ages ago.

It's very simple: they took away a feature that's been around for years for free and made it a paid-only feature.

EDIT: maybe not so simple. Based on posts below some people are able to see their manually entered lyrics still or to get it working again if it's not. I think I'm going to wait and see how it plays out.
 
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jayducharme said:
I subscribe to iTunes Match (which technically doesn't seem to exist anymore) and none of my albums -- not the ones where I added lyrics myself nor any that I bought from Apple (including Hamilton, which is shown above with lyrics) -- shows an option to view lyrics. Apple should have put a big asterisk next to their announcement of the feature.
Click to expand...


It's starting to seem more and more these days that the attitude prevalent is "Our way or get over it." It's one thing to add functionality....but not at the cost of interfering with my custom work. Especially when I don't subscribe to Apple Music. It's looking as though they make practically no distinction between the offered service and the manually built libraries of users. My collection came from, in every case, my own hard copy albums. They shouldn't monkey with that.

I never really wanted to migrate from ITunes but there a million other options out there. In many cases seemingly much more friendly. Plex is looking more tempting with each ITunes revision.

Edit: The most annoying part: Completely fixable problems. I'm not looking for a pizza to be delivered every time I add a song to the library....I'm asking to leave certain things alone or give users the option to use/not use. They can completely remedy these problems...truth is IMO they just don't give a damn.
 
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Just use MusixMatch iOS App! They actually have the lyrics for songs and it works with iTunes and Spotify.
 
autrefois said:
To reuse an expression Tim Cook likes to use, this is bullcrap. For over a decade it's been possible to view manually entered lyrics into iTunes, and then in the iPhone. It was and still is possible to do this in iOS 9. If Apple were concerned about whether or not you have the rights to display lyrics, they would have "fixed" this ages ago.

It's very simple: they took away a feature that's been around for years for free and made it a paid-only feature.
Click to expand...

They haven't taken anything away. I subscribe to iTunes Match and all songs downloaded to my iPhone have the lyrics I manually entered in iTunes. Works fine for me. Same should be true if you sync directly with iTunes rather than using match.
 
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mashwhe said:
They haven't taken anything away. I subscribe to iTunes Match and all songs downloaded to my iPhone have the lyrics I manually entered in iTunes. Works fine for me. Same should be true if you sync directly with iTunes rather than using match.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the update. It sounds like this is not the case for everyone. So maybe it is a bug, and hopefully one they fix right away. I am very hesitant to update to iOS 10 already because you can no longer add/edit star ratings. If there's a good chance I can't see lyrics either, then that's really two strikes against it. I have iTunes Match, but you shouldn't have to have Apple Music or iTunes Match to keep the same functionality is in the previous versions.
 
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