Deezer adds “search by lyrics”

The popular music streaming subscription service Deezer recently unveiled a clever new “search by lyrics feature” that other major players in the streaming game would do well to latch on to.

Guest post by James Shotwell of Haulix

Popular subscription streaming platform Deezer has a new search feature that its competition would be smart to copy.

Spotify and Apple Music are the gold standard in music streaming subscription services, but they’re not the only platforms on the market. With more than 16-million active users, Deezer is a rising global competitor, and their latest development is turning heads throughout the industry.

Deezer users can now search for songs based on lyrics. The feature, which debuted earlier this month, is unique to the French-owned company. Users can look up any song using lyrics alone as long as they know four consecutive words in that track.

“Music fans have millions of songs at their fingertips. Recalling some of the lyrics is often easier than remembering the actual name of a track. Our job is to make sure that listeners get to the tunes they want quickly and easily and our new advanced ‘search by lyrics’ feature delivers on that promise,” says Matthieu Gorvan, Deezer’s Chief Product and Technology Officer.

Deezer is also ahead of Spotify on spatial audio, supporting Sony’s 360 Reality Audio format. There are only a handful of tracks that support the new format, but that collection is steadily growing. Deezer’s SongCatcher is also built-in, whereas Spotify has nothing similar. Apple Music users get Shazam for their music discovery.

James Shotwell is the Director of Customer Engagement at Haulix and host of the company’s podcast, Inside Music. He is also a public speaker known for promoting careers in the entertainment industry, as well as an entertainment journalist with over a decade of experience. His bylines include Rolling Stone, Alternative Press, Substream Magazine, Nu Sound, and Under The Gun Review, among other popular outlets.