Troublesome Lyrics: Why Time-Synced Lyrics Are Often Absent on YouTube Music Tracks

The latest buzz in the music streaming world has got users up in arms – YouTube Music has quietly removed time-synced lyrics from many of their favorite songs. The reason behind this move appears to be a switch from Musixmatch to LyricFind as the primary lyrics provider. Unfortunately, it’s unclear whether affected songs will regain their time-synced lyrics anytime soon.

Support for time-synced lyrics has become a staple across popular music streaming apps. Services like Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music offer a feature 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. However, 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’s an inconvenience, it’s infinitely better than having no lyrics completely – glass half full and all.