It’s the little-known trick to get songs out of your head — and onto your iPhone.
Tired of never remembering the name of the song you’re humming? Not to fear: Spotify boasts an earworm-harnessing hack that allows users to identify the tunes running through their heads. The “lyrics search” was actually launched in 2021 — but the “secret” function is just now coming to the attention of many flustered users.
To use the function, which is available on both IOS and Android phones, Spotifyers simply pull up the “search” function, which is used to locate everything, including songs, albums, playlists, and even radio stations and upcoming concerts.
They then type in at least three words from the forgotten ditty, whereupon “songs with those lyrics show Lyrics match in the results,” per the Spotify guide.
For instance, if the user types in “booty booty booty,” the song “Ms. New Booty” by Bubba Sparxxx will appear as the first search. Spotify listeners ers can narrow results by typing quotation marks around said search term, such as “Let’s Dance.”
Listeners can even employ the process of elimination by typing “AND” and “NOT.” For example, inputting “Hall AND Oates” will yield results with both keywords. Meanwhile, Spotify users can type in “Rolling Stones NOT Devil” to pull up all tracks without said term.
Basically, the hack saves music fans themselves having to browse through pages and pages of Google Searches as if trying to crack a digital Da Vinci code.
Not narrow enough? Spotify users can also adjust search parameters to include specific date ranges, and can even exclude certain years by typing in the date range plus “NOT [insert year].”
Needless to say, the internet’s mind was blown by the function. “I was today’s years old when I realized that you could search for songs on Spotify using lyrics — helpful for when you don’t know the song title or artist,” marveled one impressed user on Twitter. “Anyone else just finding this out? Mind blown!”
“Spotify’s lyric search is really good! When did that happen?!?” exclaimed another.
“Just found out you can search lyrics in spotify and the song will come up?!!???” said one awestruck commenter.
Of course Spotify isn’t the only app that allows people to transfer songs from their head to their iPhone.
In 2020, Google added a “search a song” function that enabled users to hum, sing or whistle the tunes to songs whose names they don’t know.