Apple Music gets Apple Sing real-time karaoke feature

The Apple Music streaming service is getting a new feature called Apple Sing, which lets users sing along to their favorite songs, Karaoke-style. The feature is available on both the phone or tablet and the TV app, and can be enabled for a large selection of songs from the available portfolio. Apple says the Sing functionality will be compatible at launch with tens of millions of the most popular songs on the platform.

You can sing along to your favorite songs via Apple Music

The way Apple Sing works is simple. There’s the ability to lower the vocal pitch on the original song, and the lyrics are displayed on your device’s screen in real time. However, it seems that it’s not about playing negatives, but using AI algorithms directly on the device’s processor to remove the voice from the tracks being played.

This technology thus uses Apple-developed algorithms to enable background noise cancellation functions, which can isolate certain sounds so that they can be cancelled out if needed. This technology is found in both the AirPods Pro and Max earbuds, as well as in services like FaceTime and even iOS voice calls.

Apple Sing will thus work on all phones from iPhone 11 and up, iPad models from 9th generation onwards, iPad Air 4 and iPad Pro 2021, as well as Apple TV 4K 3rd generation.

Apple Sing is played by accessing lyrics in the Apple Music app. Then, using the new microphone icon, you can control the volume of your voice, manually. So you can sing along to the song with your original voice turned down, or “almost” without your voice. It’s important to note that the voice doesn’t disappear 100% even at the lowest volume setting.

Whereas until now the lyrics display tracked the song word for word, Apple Sing now tracks every syllable to help users better follow the beat. In addition, even secondary voices will have the lyrics displayed, allowing them to sing duets with others.

Apple is also preparing 50 dedicated Apple Sing playlists, made only of songs compatible with this new feature.

Unfortunately, for those using Apple Music on Android, voice isolation features will not be available in this version of the app. However, the lyrics and lyrics display features are coming to these devices.