Spotify Has Landed In Japan, With A Funky New Karaoke Feature?

Spotify has finally launched in Japan with a karaoke inspired lyrics feature.

The Japanese market has always been a tough cookie to crack for the music streaming giant, Spotify.

In Japan, almost 80 per cent of music sales are CD or vinyl. Despite the preference of physical music, it is the world's second largest music market. Needless to say, this fact alone was enough to encourage Spotify to find an innovative way to promote their app to the Japanese market.

This is largely because record labels are weary of signing away licenses to their music to streaming services. "Record labels hate to give music away for free, so Spotify's initial inventory could look even worse than Line Music or Apple Music," said Mikiro Enomoto, a pop culture professor at Kyoto Seika University.

Spotify unveiled a new feature which will show lyrics while tracks are playing, similar to how lyrics scroll by in karaoke videos.

This is a huge move for Spotify, given 91.1 per cent of Japan's total population has access to stable Internet connection.

Psst, wish we were so lucky here in Australia...

The app is now operating in 60 different markets worldwide, with more than 100 million users. 40 per cent of which, are paying subscribers.

They aren't stopping there, no siree. The Financial Times has reported Spotify was in advanced talks with rival SoundCloud about a possible deal.

Expansion seems to be the aim of the game.

Photo: Facebook - Spotify