Spotify has announced that lyrics are becoming available to all its users worldwide, both free and premium. It will be accessible on Android and iOS, as well as the web player, game consoles, and other platforms. Musixmatch continues to provide lyrics for Spotify, as it has for the past year; it also provides them for Apple Music and apps like Instagram and Shazam, so this comes as no surprise.

To see the words to your songs, start listening to something, get to the full "Now Playing" view, and swipe up from the bottom of the screen — if the song has real-time lyrics, they should come up. The process is a little different on both the desktop and TV apps.

Spotify is also broadening its reach. Iraq, the Republic of the Congo, Tajikistan, Venezuela, Libya, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo now have access to the app. This means that an additional ~180 million people worldwide can now listen to music on the platform — and thanks to this recent change, they'll also have an easier time learning the words to their favorite songs.

During the peak of the pandemic last year, I tried out a three-month trial of Apple Music. Eventually, I ended up switching back to Spotify, but I missed the real-time lyrics that Apple Music offered. It allowed me to learn the words to my favorite songs and connect more deeply with the music. In mid-2020, Spotify launched a test of live lyrics in a few countries and recently expanded testing to the United States.

So if you want to settle the internal conflict over whether Taylor Swift actually said, "All the lonely Starbucks lovers" in that one song, make sure your app is fully up-to-date. If you don't have lyrics in your music yet, they should become available in the next few weeks.