Pass The Mic: Karaoke Mode Likely Coming Soon To Spotify
It looks like live music could be returning – to your living room. A recently leaked screenshot gave us a sneak peak at what appears to be a new karaoke mode, coming soon to Spotify, who coincidentally were just granted a patent for the technology necessary to make it happen.
Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0
While Spotify can’t compete with TikTok when it comes to short videos, it might be able to do something else soon that will be just as effective. According to MBW, a screenshot was leaked last week of what looks likes a new Spotify karaoke mode, which coincides with the company being granted a patent for the technology to do it.
Although there’s no details yet, it appears that the vocal level of a song will be able to made adjustable, giving the user the ability to record a vocal track in its place. According to the recently granted patent, this ability isn’t called karaoke per se, it will allow users to “overlay a music track with their own vocals by singing into a microphone as the music plays.”
Auto-Tune As Well
The patent then goes on to suggest that even auto-tune is included in this feature buy saying, “in some implementations, [Spotify’s] media presentation system auto-tunes the vocals using data received from the remote server indicating pitch, beat, and/or chords for the first media item (e.g., pitch data stored in metadata database). The media presentation system overlays the auto-tuned vocals with the first media item to generate the composite data stream.”
I wouldn’t expect this mode to be called “karaoke” since that implies that you’re singing to a pre-recorded track for other people in a live setting. Where it competes with TikTok is to have the ability to upload the track to Spotify so other people can play it. It becomes a sound-only TikTok at that point.
Given that TikTok may be running into trouble soon and perhaps shedding users (I predict), this new feature could be something new to attract those same users to Spotify (which they may be already using) and to keep them there.
Again, this feature hasn’t officially been announced yet, but all signs are pointing in that direction.
