Amazon Echo Show is a great piece of smart tech when it comes to listening to your favorite tunes, but what should you do if it’s being not-so-great when it comes to displaying lyrics?
Lyrics might not be showing on your Amazon Echo Show because of a software bug that you can fix by resetting the device. You should also make sure that you have enough internet bandwidth to stream music. Settings like Adaptive Brightness and Do Not Disturb can also interfere with the Echo Show's ability to display lyrics properly.
Here’s everything you need to know about fixing lyrics not showing on the Amazon Echo Show.
Playing Music With Alexa and Echo Show
Playing music with Alexa on the Amazon Echo Show is just about as easy as it gets when it comes to using features on a smart device.
All you need to do is ask Alexa to play whatever music you feel like listening to. You’ll need a subscription to Prime Music to make the most of this feature, but it does give you access to around 2 million songs in Amazon’s library!
You can also play songs in third-party apps like Spotify and Pandora, but don’t expect those apps to offer all of the features that Amazon provides for its own technology.
Alexa can also handle more interesting voice commands. You can ask Alexa to put together a new playlist, play genres of music, or play the chart topping hits.
Can Echo Show Display Lyrics?
One of the best features of the Echo Show is that it can display lyrics. This lets you get the lyrics to your favorite songs or just gives you an interesting ambient screen if you're hosting a party. It's a great additional value for people who use the Echo Show and Alexa to play their favorite music.
Let's start this tutorial by showing you how you can quickly and easily enable lyrics on the Echo Show.
How to Display Lyrics on Echo Show
There are two basic ways to display lyrics on the Amazon Echo Show.
The first is to simply press the “lyrics” button while you are playing your favorite songs. This button will appear on the bottom of the screen while a song is playing. Lyrics should pop up pretty quickly and start scrolling while keeping pace with the music!
You can also bet your Prime subscription that there is a voice command for this! You can ask Alexa to display lyrics using “Alexa, show lyrics” or “Alexa, lyrics on.” However, there’s one trick you need to know.
This gets us into our bugs and fixes section early, but Alexa can only display the lyrics for Amazon Prime music. This means that third-party apps don’t get lyrics on the Echo Show even if Amazon also has those same songs!
In order to always get lyrics, you should specify to use Amazon Music when playing a song you want lyrics from. All you need to do is say “Alexa, play Baby Shark on Amazon Music” and it will play that song in a way that can also display lyrics.
Oh, make sure to replace “Baby Shark” with your favorite song—unless that’s already Baby Shark.
Experiencing a solid orange bar on your Amazon Echo Show and searching for a solution to resolve it? Explore this article for guidance on fixing the issue.
Echo Show Lyrics Not Showing: 9 Causes and Fixes
Now we're going to get into the bugs and all of the other reasons why the lyrics aren't showing up for your favorite songs on the Amazon Echo Show. Most of these problems can be easily fixed, but a few of them might mean that the lyrics for the songs you're looking for won't show up at all.
Let's start with the fixes that you can get taken care of right away and work our way towards some more interesting problems.
Spotify, Pandora, and Third-Party Music Apps
The first thing we need to get out of the way is a particular problem with Amazon.
All of the major tech giants are a little reluctant to work with third-party software, but Amazon seems to be particularly hostile to the idea of working with third-party apps. This means that you won't be able to get lyrics for music played on Spotify, Pandora, and other popular music apps.
The music player on the Amazon Echo Show will only be able to display lyrics to songs played on Amazon music. You'll either have to find that song on Amazon music or go without lyrics in order to get around the lyrics not showing up for third-party apps.
Lyrics Only Stay On for a Short Time
Another common problem is that the lyrics only show up for a short period of time before disappearing. This problem could be related to fixes that we'll talk about later in this article such as changing the adaptive brightness setting or toggling do not disturb off. However, it's also a common software bug that can be fixed by resetting your Amazon Echo Show.
In order to reset the Echo Show, you need to hold the mute and volume down buttons for 15 seconds. After that, you’ll see the Amazon logo appear and you’ll be able to follow the startup instructions. Your lyrics should be back after that!
Lyrics Won’t Scroll on Amazon Echo
If the lyrics won't scroll on your Amazon Echo Show, you've likely got similar problems to the lyrics only staying on screen for a short amount of time. This could be a problem with your adaptive brightness settings or your do not disturb preferences.
Your first stop should be able to do a quick reset on your Echo Show. This will get everything back in order and will likely correct this bug (turning the power off and on again fixes a range of bugs, including the infamous Echo Show SSL error).
Some users have also reported that the lyrics won't scroll if their Internet isn't sufficiently strong enough. This might not be the case however because streaming music and displaying lyrics in real time isn't the most demanding thing that your Wi-Fi router handles.
Nevertheless, you should check to make sure that you have enough Wi-Fi bandwidth to stream music without interruptions.
Lyrics Start Playing for the Wrong Song!
There's two things that we need to think about when your Echo show starts playing the wrong song lyrics.
The first problem that could be causing this as a software bug. Amazon music has millions of different songs and it's entirely possible that the wires get crossed every now and then. The software bug might be server-side or it could be in your Echo Show.
If restarting your Echo Show doesn't fix this bug, it could be a problem with Amazon servers that they're going to have to sort out on their own. This is more likely to be the case when a problem only affects our particular song rather than every song you played on your device.
Another thing worth considering is that Alexa sometimes needs very specific instructions to get things right. This is often the case when you're asking for something that's a bit too general. Here's a good example.
If you ask Alexa to show the lyrics for “Love Song,” Alexa might get confused. Do you mean “Love Song” by The Cure, Tesla, 311, The Damned, Kenny Rogers, or the countless other bands who have written a song titled “Love Song”?
When in doubt, give Alexa specific instructions like “Alexa, show lyrics for Love Song by The Cure” to get the best results.
Adaptive Brightness is Turning Off Lyrics
Your adaptive brightness setting also could be the culprit. This setting changes the brightness of your Echo Show screen based on the level of light in the room. It's also got a bad habit of accidentally turning off the scrolling lyrics on your music.
In order to do this fix, we're going to need to turn off adaptive brightness. This means that you'll have to manually adjust the brightness on your screen to match whatever you need for the room that you're in:
Here's how you can disable or enable adaptive brightness on the Amazon Echo Show:
- Open the Settings menu
- Tap the Brightness menu
- Toggle Adaptive Brightness on or off as needed
Do Not Disturb is Disturbing Your Jam Session!
Just like the adaptive brightness setting, the “Do Not Disturb” setting can also accidentally turn off your scrolling music lyrics. Fixing this issue is also very similar. We're going to be temporarily turning off the Do Not Disturb setting in order to enjoy live lyrics.
Here's how you can turn off Do Not Disturb on Amazon Echo Show.
- Open the Alexa app
- Tap Devices
- Select Echo & Alexa
- Tap on your Echo Show
- Tap Do Not Disturb
- Toggle Do Not Disturb on or off
Some versions of Echo Show also allow you to enable or disable this within the device itself, by going into Settings and then Do Not Disturb (this is also sometimes tucked away under the “Photo & Display” menu):
Amazon Echo is Experiencing a Bug
Your Amazon Echo Show could also be experiencing a bug that's preventing it from displaying their works correctly. The best thing that you can do is to reset your device which will restore the factory firmware and eliminate any bugs that are preventing you from enjoying your lyrics.
To recap on the steps earlier, here's a step-by-step guide for resetting the Amazon Echo Show.
- Press and hold the Mute and Volume Down buttons for 15 seconds
- Wait for the Amazon logo to pop up
- Follow the on-screen instructions for setting up your device
Update Your Echo
Another quick fix is to check to make sure that your Amazon Echo Show is up to date. Out of date software is much more prone to bugs and that includes having problems displaying lyrics.
Here is how you can quickly update your Echo Show.
- Open the Settings menu
- Select Device Options
- Tap Check for Software Updates
Amazon Just Doesn’t Have the Lyrics
The last problem with Amazon Echo Show displaying lyrics is something that might not be able to be fixed.
Amazon can only display lyrics to songs that it has the lyrics for. There's a chance that Amazon might have missed the lyrics and some of the 2 million songs they've added to their music library. This is more often the case for obscure or less popular music, but even extremely popular songs can either be missing lyrics or have had the wrong lyrics added to them.
For example, this really popular and awesome song doesn't have any lyrics:
(What do you mean that I have weird music tastes?!)
