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Spotify & Karaoke: 5 Common Questions (Answered)

Spotify is the music streaming giant everyone’s heard of, with a vast library of music available on-demand anywhere with an internet connection.

Knowing this, it seems natural to wonder how one might go about using such an expansive online music library for Karaoke.

How easy is this to do? Does Spotify have a built-in feature for it? Are there other streaming services that do Karaoke better?

If you want answers to any of these questions, keep reading, because we intend to find out!

Woman listening music on her headphones

Does Spotify Have a Karaoke Feature?

Spotify includes a “sing mode” that shows you the lyrics, mutes the vocal part of the song, and even analyzes your singing to give you a score at the end.

To access this mode, you’ll first want to make sure your Spotify app is updated to the latest version.

So head to the app store on the device of your choice, and update if necessary!

Once you’ve done that, “sing” mode should be available on your Spotify app if it wasn’t already.

  • Now you just need to find the song you want to sing Karaoke to.
  • Once you’ve selected your song, scroll down to the lyrics section, itself a relatively recent addition to the app.
  • To the right, you should see a microphone icon with the word sing’ – tap it to activate Spotify’s Karaoke feature.
  • Once you tap the icon, the song’s lyrics should start appearing on the screen Karaoke-style, with an icon letting you know your voice is being analyzed.

Now, just sing along to your heart’s content!

When you’re done, Spotify will analyze your performance and let you know how well you did by comparing the pitch of your voice to the singer’s.

Sadly, we don’t know of any way to use sing mode without the analyzer, so if you want to have some Karaoke fun without being judged by an AI, you may be out of luck.

Still, this new feature certainly delivers, if you’re craving a Karaoke experience on Spotify.

However, we must mention, that it appears that this feature is still in its trial phase. This means that you might encounter some issues when using the feature.

For more, head over to our article about known issues with Spotify’s Karaoke-mode.

Does Spotify Have Non-Vocal Versions for Karaoke?

As far as we can tell, users are able to adjust the amount of vocal when using the “sing” mode for karaoke. 

However, we have not personally tested this feature, so we cannot guarantee this is the case, but our sources seem to suggest it is.

As for separate instrumental versions of any given song, Spotify certainly has some of those too.

The thing to understand, though, is that Spotify only has whatever content artists have made and put on their platform.

That is to say, if a given artist (or their record label) decides to release an instrumental version of their songs on Spotify, then they’ll be there.

But if they don’t, they won’t; Spotify doesn’t come along and strip vocal tracks out of content in their library to add instrumental versions themselves, at least as far as we know.

Can You Sing Along with Spotify?

Depending on where you are and what time of day it is, you might annoy some people, but you certainly have the ability to do so if you choose.

And if you just want to sing along, all you have to do is pick a song, hit play, and start singing.

Of course, singing along and singing Karaoke are two different things.

Singing along is easy, especially if you have the lyrics memorized; just start belting out those lyrics alongside the vocal track of your favorite song.

Karaoke, on the other hand, requires your voice to replace the vocal track, and as such requires a few additional features.

To sing Karaoke, you’ll need an instrumental version of the song—one without vocals—and a convenient way to see the lyrics as you sing, in case you don’t have them memorized.

All of this is provided by Spotify’s “sing” feature, available by tapping the icon next to the lyrics.

What Is the Easiest Way to Sing Karaoke with Spotify?

The easiest way to sing Karaoke with Spotify is the “sing mode” we discussed earlier in the article. 

As long as your Spotify app is up-to-date, you should be able to use this feature any song that had vocals to begin with, and for which the feature is supported.

We weren’t able to find specific data on how many songs do or don’t let you use the “sing” feature, but we can hazard a guess it’s less than all of them.

This is a supposition on our part, but it’s hard to imagine everything required to make a Karaoke-compatible song can be done en masse by AI.

The existing vocal track has to be muted, the lyrics have to have been added, the vocal analyzer needs to know the target range you should be emulating, and so on.

Regardless, while it may not work for every single song on Spotify, it certainly works for a lot of the most popular content.

And so long as this is true for whatever song(s) you want to sing Karaoke to, the built-in sing mode is by far the best way to do it on this platform.

What Is the Best Music Streaming Service for Karaoke?

There are quite a few, actually.

In fact, there are entire streaming services specifically dedicated to singing Karaoke.

We could talk about how Apple Music, Spotify’s biggest competitor, also has a Karaoke mode, but the truth is that neither of these giants is actually best for it.

That’s because other services exist which were tailor-made just for Karaoke, so of course they’re going to outperform these streaming giants just dabbling in Karaoke.

These Karaoke-specific streaming services exist for both businesses and individual consumers.

We’ll focus on the latter category but if you do happen to own a business that a Karaoke service would benefit from, you can see a full list in the second link under “sources.”

The three big names for individual-use Karaoke streaming services are:

  • Singa
  • Karaoke Anywhere
  • Star Maker

A Singa subscription will run you $9.99/month, but it also has a free version that lets you sing three songs a day.

Karaoke Anywhere also costs $9.99/month, allows free use of two songs per day, and lets you purchase a 2-day pass to use for special events without subscribing for a whole month.

Star Maker is the priciest, at $16.99/month, but makes up for it with expansive collaboration and customization options compared to the other two.

This is not an exhaustive list by any means, just a quick top 3, so if you want to learn more, check out the full list in our sources below!

Sources

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