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Your YouTube Music library may have lost its time-synced lyrics, here’s why (Update)
- Users are unhappy about YouTube Music removing time-synced lyrics from many of their favorite songs.
- The reason behind this appears to be the switch from Musixmatch to LyricFind as the primary lyrics provider.
- It’s currently unclear whether affected songs will regain their time-synced lyrics anytime soon.
Update: September 5, 2024 (2:26 PM ET): Whatever Google has done to revert YouTube Music lyrics to their old, non-time-synced behavior, it does not appear to be the fault of LyricFind. The team over at 9to5Google noticed while investigating this issue that both Musixmatch- and LyricFind-sourced lyrics on YouTube Music are experiencing this same behavior.
Separately, a spokesperson for LyricFind reached out to Android Authority with a statement:
LyricFind is not the cause of the missing scrolling feature for some songs on YouTube. Time-synching is something that we’ve provided since 2010. We can’t speak specifically to why some sync content might be missing, but YouTube makes its own decisions about which of our lyric features it offers based on its own product and licensing agreements.
We’re still not sure what prompted this, but the observed evidence suggests it’s on Google’s end. Android Authority regrets the error and apologizes for any mischaracterization.
Original article: September 5, 2024 (6:24 AM ET): Support for time-synced lyrics has become a standard feature across popular music streaming apps. Services like Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music offer a view that displays the relevant verses as they’re sung in real time. Typically, lyrics providers add the necessary timestamps to enable this automatic scrolling behavior. So, due to a shift in providers on YouTube Music, many songs are now losing their time-synced lyrics.
According to a Reddit post and users’ subsequent comments, many songs have lost their time-synced lyrics on YouTube Music. The original poster notes that the lyrics provider for impacted songs has switched from Musixmatch to LyricFind. This suggests that LyricFind may not have added the needed timestamps to its lyrics, consequently disabling the feature on affected tracks.
Android Authority has confirmed that many songs’ lyrics providers have indeed changed, downgrading the lyrics feature in the process. This includes some of the latest trending hits on YouTube Music’s main page — not just older releases.
It’s currently unclear if LyricFind plans to add timestamps to its lyrics’ backend anytime soon. If not, YouTube Music users may be stuck with regular, unsynchronized lyrics — unless the company switches back to Musixmatch or a similar provider.
In the meantime, users will have to scroll through the verses manually when singing along to their favorite tunes. While it sure is an inconvenience, it’s infinitely better than having no lyrics completely — glass half full and all.