Spotify Wants to Show You the Real Story Behind a Song
Spotify wants you to know exactly what songs' lyrics mean as you're listening to them. The music streaming service announced Tuesday that it's working with annotations site Genius to launch a new type of playlist called "Behind the Lyrics," which aims to give listeners insight behind a song's words. It's launching Tuesday on Spotify's iPhone app. The first playlist will focus on hip hop, featuring tracks from Pusha T, Tinashe, and Diplo. Genius will use its library of song lyrics and musical knowledge to pull up lyric excerpts, fun facts, and annotations coming from the artists themselves and the Genius community during playback. The second Genius-powered playlist will be called "Behind the Lyrics HITS," which will debut in the coming week. Spotify hasn't said when the new playlist style will be available for other platforms. The idea of providing a window into an artists life behind the scenes isn't new, but it's becoming more common in music services. Apple, for instance, offers a feature called Connect, essentially a feed of updates from the artists users follow.