People love asking Alexa about Justin Timberlake lyrics

03 Oct People love asking Alexa about Justin Timberlake lyrics

In the future, one of the keys to success for musicians could be writing incessantly memorable lyrics. Okay, maybe that’s a stretch, but if Amazon’s on-demand Prime Music service continues to grow as a prominent source for streaming–and if Alexa-powered speakers like the new line of Echo devices remain as popular as they are–it could become commonplace for people to search for songs by reciting lyrics to the always-listening robotic speaker in their homes. Suddenly, a catchy lyric (regardless of what the song title may be) could help boost streams for a given song.

Case in point: Justin Timberlake’s earworm “Can’t Stop the Feeling.” According to Amazon’s newly released Alexa lyric search charts, the song is one of the songs that Echo users search for most using its lyrics. The song lands in the top 50 twice, thanks to two different lines that people use when they say “Alexa, play the song that goes….”

This feature, which is unique to Amazon’s music service and devices, uses meta data about the lyrics tied to songs in the Prime Music library. Since voice is the primary user interface for Echo devices, Amazon has invested quite a bit of effort in making its voice search for music as nuanced and robust as possible.

Other songs in the Alexa lyric search top 50 include Katy Perry’s “Wrecking Ball” and “Swish Swish,” “HandClap” by Fitz and the Tantrums, and Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger.” It’s not just recent radio pop hits that find their way onto this list: the Beatles, Steppenwolf, Sir-Mix-A-Lot, and the Who made the chart as well. Oh, and so did Nickelback. You can see the whole list here. 

Source: Fast Company