Photo Credit: Deezer
Deezer introduces ‘Search by Lyrics’ feature for users to find those elusive tunes.
If you can remember a few words of the song, you can search for it on Deezer. The streaming company says the feature is now available for all tracks that include sing-along lyrics. You’ll need to know at least four words of the lyric you’re searching on Deezer. For now, search by lyrics is only available on the web version of Deezer.
“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.
Both free and paid Deezer users can use the new ‘search by lyrics’ feature on the web.
One curious exception is that Deezer Kids profiles cannot use the feature. That’s probably to protect them from songs with explicit lyrics. Deezer has a subscriber base of fewer than 10 million listeners, but they’re continually improving the product. The one area where Deezer remains solidly behind Spotify, Apple Music, and even Amazon Music is its podcasts.
Deezer can’t do much there, these bigger companies are snapping up exclusive podcasts. Spotify has Joe Rogan, Amazon Music snapped up Wondery, and Apple Music is creating its own original podcast content. If all you care about is music, you’ll be happy with Deezer. But some podcast shows are accepting those heavy Spotify bags to go exclusive.
One area where Deezer does beat the competition is its Flow playlist. Flow is an infinite mix of new music and your favorite tracks. Deezer updates its Discovery playlist every Monday, full of songs you’ve never heard (at least on Deezer). Spotify has the slight advantage when it comes to browsing by genre and mood, but Deezer isn’t far behind.
Its search by lyrics feature will certainly help narrow the gap, too. For audiophiles, Deezer’s HiFi plan offers access to high-quality FLAC audio tracks. You’ll need a decent set of cans to hear the difference, though.
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.