Lyrics won't get displayed / Behind the Lyrics feature not working

[2ocgqfv-o_war]

Plan

Premium

Country

Germany/German locale/English locale

Operating System

Android 5/6

My Question or Issue

Hi,

I'm unable to use the Behind the Lyrics feature (feature has been enabled in the app settings) to have lyrics displayed. I have tried songs which definitely have lyrics in the Genius database. However neither on my Android devices nor on my FireTV (using Spotify's own app for FireTV) lyrics will be displayed. 

I've tried to use either the German or English locale on my devices just in case Spotify will only display lyrics on devices set to English. But the locale does not make an difference apparently. 

So my simple question is: What can I do to have lyrics displayed in the Spotify app?

[Loxer]

Hey @2ocgqfv-o_war,

Good question!

Genius is a great service for uncovering the truth behind those beautiful song lyrics and Spotify has got you covered here brining that service to their app. However, not all songs do have lyrics displayed on Spotify app, despite the fact that Genius might have the lyrics in their site. So not all songs do have that.

If you are having trouble enabling Lyrics, just go to Settings>Playback>Behind the Lyrics. 

Hope I was able to help 🙂

[2ocgqfv-o_war]

Thanks a lot for your reply. The appropriate setting in the app is enabled. However there is not one single song I could find where lyrics where actually displayed. 

Do you have an example song where lyrics are being displayed on one of your devices? 

[Loxer]

Sure!

Here it is:

[2ocgqfv-o_war]

Thanks again!

So I tested it.

No lyrics on FireTV.

No lyrics on an Android 5.02 tablet.

But lyrics were displayed on an Android 6.0 smartphone. 

So yes, lyrics work on at least one device I have tested so far. So thanks for the example that helped me to test it out.

But the question remains why lyrics won't work on an Android 5.02 tablet and FireTV.

It seems the issue is similar to this one.

[Loxer]

Hey @2ocgqfv-o_war,

I found 2 articles you might want to read through.

Here you have them: 1 & 2.

Hope I was able to help 🙂

[2ocgqfv-o_war]

Yes, I tried a third party app (Genius) together with Spotify that worked. But this is a very rough workaround for something that should come with the Spotify app. 

It might very well be that Behind the Lyrics is not available for certain devices. But in this case it would be nice to get some information about it - for example when enabling this feature on an unsupported device. That would save the user a lot of time and searching for a possible solution. 

And especially on FireTV lyrics are a must have. The TV is on, shows cover art and is ideal to show the lyrics of the song playing. 

Right now I'm deciding whether or not to switch from Amazon Music Unlimited to Spotify. Not be able to see the lyrics on my tablet and FireTV is really disappointing and a huge plus for Amazon (which has no problems with displaying lyrics for most songs). 

[Loxer]

Hey @2ocgqfv-o_war,

Someone seemed to have solved this issue when he reached on twitterto @SpotifyCares, or on Facebook by sending a message to the Spotify Cares Facebook page.
Please be aware that responses may take anywhere from 24-48 hours depending on the volume of tickets they are currently handling.

Hope I was able to help 🙂

[2ocgqfv-o_war]

Thanks, I have already contacted Spotify on Twitter regarding this issue. I will update this thread in case they will be able to solve this issue.

[Loxer]

That sounds great! 

Fingers crossed until then🤞

[2ocgqfv-o_war · Accepted solution]

I got an answer from Spotify on Twitter basically telling me that they do not currently support lyrics on FireTV. They suggest to submit an idea which I did here.

[2ocgqfv-o_war · Accepted solution]

A friendly email support (yes, Spotify does have email support) verified that "Behind the Lyrics" is currently only support on mobile and TVs with Chromecast.

I'm still evaluating different streaming service because I unsatisfied with the enourmous ammount of bugs in the Amazon Music app (that I have used until now). Not having lyrics on my FireTV is unfortuanetely a no-go for me. So personally I have to choose another streaming service that does provide lyrics on FireTV. 

Technically (Spotify Connect for example) Spotify is one of the best streaming services on the market. It is most unfortunate that a basic service like lyrics (well, for me it is basic and for most other streaming services it is as well) is supported so poorly.