Apple Music is the music streaming service from the Big Apple and began its journey a few years ago. Like all subscription services, managers and developers try to find quality tools to differentiate between services. In the case of this Apple service they have presented Apple Music Sing, a new feature that provides the option of karaoke to subscribers. It is already available for the millions of subscribers as long as they update their devices to iOS 16.2. Do you want to know the news of this new tool? We tell you everything.
Apple Music Sing, Apple's karaoke
At the beginning of December, Apple published a Press release in its press center in which a function called Apple Music Song to your streaming music service. It is about nothing more and nothing less than a function that allows users to sing their favorite songs by configuring the settings of the voices and following the lyrics in real time. That is to say, a karaoke.
We hadn't had any great news in Apple Music for a long time since these are normally presented at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, WWDC, in June every year. However, with the arrival of Christmas and the new update of iOS 16.2 in mid-December, Apple broke the news. Thanks to the wealth of technology behind today's songs, it is possible to separate the music from the voice, being able to modulate the sounds, leaving only the sound without the voice of the singers to achieve real karaoke.
Until now, Apple Music had the carousel of letters where you could follow the lyrics of the different songs in real time and synchronously. And this feature was available on all systems that support the service, including tvOS, the operating system for Apple TV. That is why Apple now introduces an added improvement to this carousel with the removal of voices to be able to place the user's voice above.
How Apple Music Sing works
Apple Music Sing is integrated into the Apple Music app itself. Once we start our Apple ID session, we can access the service. Once that's done, we will play a song and we will access the full screen. At that moment We will see an icon with a microphone and some stars. This is the Apple Music Sing function.
From that moment on, the user is the owner of the reproduction and can modify the volumes of the artists' voices in order to modulate how much of their voice appears in the playback. In this way, the user will be able to find the perfect point to start singing while following the lyrics in sync as before.
“We know that our users really like to sing along to the lyrics of their favorite songs, so we wanted to improve this experience to further strengthen their connection to music. It's a lot of fun and I'm sure you'll love it”, Oliver Schusser, vice president of Apple Music and Beats at Apple.
To avoid distractions, you will only see clearly the lyrics that you have to sing at that moment, leaving both the upper and lower verses blurred. Apple wants to dedicate some of its effort to breaking down the fundamental aspects of the function that can go unnoticed:
- Configuring the voice settings: As we have said, users can sing with the artist's original voices, do it alone or mix them. All this with a regulator accessible from the playback control.
- Lyrics in real time: As we have commented, the synchronization of the lyrics is encouraged leaving the part that we did not sing blurry to avoid distractions.
- Secondary voices: the lyrics of the chorus are animated independently of the lyrics of the main vocal in order to follow it. Especially in some songs where there is a main voice with secondary choruses.
- duet view: when there are multiple singers, their lyrics appear on opposite sides of the screen for easier duetting or multi-voice singing.
Necessary requirements to make use of this function
Apple Music Sing is out now, but just like many other features there are a number of requirements that we must meet to be able to use it. We summarize them in the following points:
- Apple Music Subscription: As we have mentioned, the karaoke function is integrated into the subscription to the music service, so first and foremost it is essential to have a subscription in order to use the function.
- iOS 16.2: This update is already available for all those devices where it is compatible (iPhone 8 and higher, in the case of iPhones). To update your terminal, just go to Settings> Software Updates to complete the installation.
- iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV 4K: almost any Apple device is compatible with this new feature as long as it is updated to its latest versions.
The big apple streaming music service
As we said, having exclusive tools and functions cause to make a difference and to focus attention on a certain service. In the case of Spotify we have free accounts with ads that allow users to listen to free music from all devices without paying. In the case of Apple Music, the great ecosystem formed by the large number of software in the Big Apple and, on this occasion, the arrival of Apple Music Sing as we have seen.
If we take a brief look at the main music services we find Spotify, with approximately 345 million monthly active users and 155 million paying subscribers worldwide. In the case of Apple Music, it is estimated that in 2021 they had just over 60 million subscribers. Since in this service all subscribers are paid, all its subscribers pay to listen to music. we also have AmazonMusic, with just over 55 million paying subscribers in 2021, as well as Tidal with just over 4 million subscribers worldwide.
These data are usually treated with care since companies can vary their numbers depending on many variables and publishing their statistics without being sure that their competitors publish them can give highly profitable information to the competition. However, it is clear that Spotify is still the king in this field. But for many features, Apple Music is taking the lead and many users have already made the switch.