The New iOS 16.2 Just Killed The Karaoke Industry With Apple Music Sing

The new iOS 16.2 is rolling out to Apple users as the biggest iOS release of the year.

iOS 16.1 brought new features to Apple users like a battery percentage indicator and iCloud Shared Photo Library. But iOS 16.2’s new Apple Music Sing feature appears to be the most hyped feature release of the year, at least for Apple Music users.

Did Apple Music Sing just kill the karaoke industry?

The new Apple Music Sing feature has recently been seen on social media. It automatically shows real-time lyrics for Apple Music users that scroll up the screen like a karaoke machine.

But that’s not where Sing stops. Users have the option to remove singing from songs so any Apple Music song is played as only instrumental, but they can also keep the lyrics scrolling just like a karaoke machine.

Here are two videos of Sing’s karaoke feature in action:

and

Twitter has been flooded with videos of people falling in love with the new Apple Music karaoke feature, officially named ‘Apple Music Sing’.

https://twitter.com/kaubin/status/1600600246937128966

Apple published a press release on ‘Sing’ on December 6th, a week before the rollout of iOS 16.2. They call it “an exciting new feature that allows users to sing along to their favorite songs with adjustable vocals1 and real-time lyrics.”

The press release says Apple Music Sing “offers multiple lyric views to help fans take the lead, perform duets, sing backup, and more — all integrated within Apple Music’s unparalleled lyrics experience.”

For anyone out there thinking that singing on an iPhone’s small screen will never kill the karaoke industry, think again. Apple says this feature will be available on “iPhone, iPad, and the new Apple TV 4K” but anyone with an iPhone or iPad can airstream it to a smart TV.

The only thing stopping every karaoke bar from adopting this as their new in-house technology will be music rights. Four major features of Sing include:

Adjustable vocals: Users now have control over a song’s vocal levels. They can sing with the original artist vocals, take the lead, or mix it up on millions of songs in the Apple Music catalog.

Real-time lyrics: Users can sing along to their favorite songs with animated lyrics that dance to the rhythm of the vocals.

Background vocals: Vocal lines sung simultaneously can animate independently from the main vocals to make it easier for users to follow.

Duet view: Multiple vocalists show on opposite sides of the screen to make duets or multi-singer tracks easy to sing along to.

A quick perusal of Twitter for ‘iOS 16.2 + karaoke’ reveals most Apple Music users are confident that Sing will completely overhaul the karaoke industry. There are an estimated 88 million Apple Music users and that number grows every year.