We know the decade has been nostalgia-ed to death, but any music fan who lived through the ’90s and early ’00s and is being honest with his or herself will remember that finding out behind-the-scenes facts about music was crazy hard. It was a dark time to which we should never return and Pop-Up Video (the VH1 program that inserted factoids over music videos) was a rare beacon of light. (Sidenote: You brought it back in 2011 for a short-lived revival, bring it back again!)
Now Spotify is adding some of that pop-culture razzle-dazzle to their player with the new “Behind The Lyrics” playlists. The streaming giant has teamed up with lyrics annotation website Genius to create playlists that automatically provide annotations about songs as the songs play.
The feature currently only works on Spotify’s iPhone app, but Spotify plans to expand that in the future. Curious desk-bound listeners can access the feature via Genius’ website (you’ll need to have Spotify’s desktop app installed). The first playlist available through the service is (understandably) hip-hop-centric. Behind The Lyrics: Hip-Hop showcases the new feature over the course of 50 songs by artists like Pusha T, 2 Chainz, and Drake. There are also artist-specific playlists for Push, Diplo and Tinashe.
For now the service is only available on three playlists, but Spotify is telling users to “expect the Genius treatment on much more music you love soon.” Well, hopefully this holds true and this great nation can feel the love of those pop-up factoids and explainers once again.
(Via The Verge)
