Spotify Enhances Lyrics Feature: Now with Offline Access and More Translations!

On Wednesday, Spotify announced enhancements to its integrated lyrics feature, which includes the global availability of lyrics translations, the ability to access lyrics offline, and a new location for the feature within the app.

These updates are part of Spotify’s ongoing refinements to the lyrics functionality, aimed at encouraging free users to transition to subscription plans. This initiative began with attempts to restrict access to lyrics in 2024, although the company relaxed these restrictions later that year in response to widespread user feedback.

Now, Spotify anticipates that the new offline lyrics feature—exclusively available to Premium subscribers—will motivate users to upgrade their accounts.

In this updated experience, lyrics will now be positioned directly beneath the album artwork or the short looping video that accompanies the music. Spotify reports that this relocation is based on user testing, which indicates it enhances engagement with the lyrics feature. Users will still be able to share their favorite lyrics snippets via social media from the Now Playing View.

This new lyrics feature, referred to by Spotify as “lyric previews,” will be made available globally to both free and premium customers on iOS and Android applications for smartphones and tablets.

Additionally, lyrics translations, which were initially launched in 2022, will now be accessible globally, expanding from the previous 25 markets supported last year. When translations are available, users can simply tap the translate icon on the lyrics card to see the translation displayed beneath the original lyrics, defaulting to the language settings of their device, as stated by Spotify.

In recent years, Spotify’s rollout of lyrics across its app has been slow, primarily due to licensing complications. Following years of consumer demand for the feature, the company successfully launched real-time lyrics for global users in 2021, following a limited introduction in several dozen markets the year prior and extensive testing dating back to 2019. Before these updates, Spotify collaborated with Genius to create a “behind the lyrics” feature that combined partial lyrics with song trivia.