Spotify ‘About the Song’: New Swipeable Story Cards for Premium

Image: Spotify

Spotify has just launched a new Beta feature, “About the Song,” to finally solve your curiosity about a lyric's meaning. Gone are the days when you needed to shift apps while playing music just to search "who is this song about?" or "what do these lyrics mean?" Now, you can get the full context of the lyrics directly inside the Spotify app.

What is the ‘About the Song’ Feature?

Today, the famous music platform announced the About the Song feature, designed to let you easily find the real meaning behind the deep lyrics of your favorite songs. This new feature integrates built-in swipeable story cards directly into the Now Playing view, eliminating the need to move to third-party apps.

Although this new feature utilizes third-party sources like Variety, TIME, and Rolling Stone to give you verified context, you get the summarized backstory right where you are listening. This new About the Song feature is factually more correct and offers better-verified context than the previous “Behind the Lyrics" feature, which relied heavily on Genius annotations.

How to Access Spotify’s ‘About the Song’

Now, the question in everyone's mind is: how do I access and use this feature, and is it available to free users?

Unfortunately, this new feature is available to Premium users only and is currently restricted to supported regions: US, UK, CA, AU, NZ.

If you are a Spotify Premium subscriber, you likely have access to this feature already, provided you are in one of these supported regions.

Follow these steps to access the story cards:

1. Play a Popular Track: The feature is currently rolling out on high-traffic, trending songs first.
2. Open ‘Now Playing’: Tap the bar at the bottom of your screen to expand the album art.
3. Scroll Down: Swipe up past the lyrics section. You are looking for a new header labeled "About the Song."
4. Start Swiping: Unlike the static "Storyline" text, these are modular cards. Swipe left on the card to read different facts, production notes, and media summaries.

Note: If you only see "Credits" or "Live Events" at the bottom, the song does not have an "About the Song" card yet, or your app needs an update.

Troubleshooting: Why Can't I See the Cards?

If you have updated your app but still don't see the cards, make sure you don’t find yourself in the following blockers:

1. Region Lock: The Beta is currently exclusive to English-speaking markets: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.
2. Account Status: This is a Premium-only feature. Free tier users will still see the standard lyrics view.
3. Song Availability: Not every song has data yet. The feature uses third-party data to generate these summaries, so deep cuts and local indie artists may not have cards generated for them yet.

Alongside the About the Song feature, Spotify is also ready to give US and UK users the ability to buy physical copies of their favorite audiobooks.

Recent weeks seem to be the busiest for Spotify as they release plenty of features. Another feature released just a few days back is lyrics translation, offline lyrics, and lyrics previews for users worldwide. It seems we can expect even more features soon as they continue to compete for the top spot in music streaming.