How can I see song lyrics in iOS 5.0?

The feature has been removed from the Music app. Read this article from TUAW.

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/10/12/ios-5-features-changes-in-music-app-for-ipad/

I copied and pasted the pertinent information here for you to read but you can read it in its entirety at the link above.

"Unfortunately, the UI confusion doesn't end at this screen. A single tap on album artwork used to bring up lyrics info, but that's been deprecated; tapping instead brings up the controls, with no lyrics info at all. Inexplicably, Apple has removed lyrics support entirely from the iPad's Music app in iOS 5; it feels like an intentional move, since multiple betas came and went without the feature being restored, and lyrics support hasn't returned for the public release. Even the iPod nano is capable of displaying lyrics, so the iPad is now the only Apple device other than the iPod shuffle that has no lyrics support. It's baffling."

This may be a bug for all that I know but I am too cynical to believe that.

From everything that I have read, it appears as though Apple did remove the feature. What the reasons could be for that are beyond me. And I did find the paragraph that states that feature exists in the iPad. I copied this from the iPad User Guide for iOS 5. The free book that I downloaded in iBooks.

"Display a song’s lyrics

Display the album cover by tapping the thumbnail at the top of the screen. Lyrics appear if you’ve added them to the song using the song’s Info window in iTunes."

However, who knows with Apple anymore. Case in point - Apple changed the wording on their website about multitouch gestures being one of the new features of iOS 5, a day or two after the update came out. They decided to release the feature to work on the iPad 2 only - even though the website promoted the feature as being one of the new features for the "iPad" for months leading up to the release - leading all users to believe that it would work on the iPad 1 as well. I don't know if you read any of those threads but the screaming is finally starting to die down on that one.

My point is that even thought the guide says that the song lyrics works, I have not read of anyone that can confirm that it does. Maybe someone else will confirm that the feature is in the iOS, but I don't believe that it is. So for the time being - for me anyway - it is not a bug - but another "why did they do that" decision by Apple.

It is an option with iTunes Match so hopefully it will reappear when it is released.

From what I'm reading it [leaving out the lyrics that you've put in] is intentional. I don't understand why these changes? And why just on the iPad? My iphone 4 still displays too, but we have the ipad for larger screen. I don't understand what was wrong with iTunes that it changed to Music. We've lost lots of known, trusted, functionality and gained [unless someone can explain it to me] NOTHING! These types of issues will ruin my honeymoon with Apple if the issues are not fixed soon.

Stupid move by Apple to remove lyrics. Maybe they don't want people reading. Maybe iOS 5 can't handle the multitasking. This really cheapens the iPad experience.

Don't waste your time adding lyrics to iTunes! Apple no longer supports lyrics in iOS 5 devices! Of course, they still work with MP3s on ANDROID devices.

Wow I had this problem until I fooled around with iTunes. You cannot see the lyrics to my knowledge if the song is a mp3 file so I converted my mp3s to AAC files in iTunes then deleted the mp3s and transferred the AAC file to the iPhone and boom it works. As long as you have the lyrics entered under the mp3 file it will transfer to the AAC file. All of you who were crying over this you are welcome, took me all of 10 mins to figure this out. No this isn't a work around this is how to do it the correct way!

Sctmoss wrote:

transferred the AAC file to the iPhone and boom it works.

No one here is talking about the player on the iPhone. This thread is about the iPad. The player is different. Have you tested this solution on the iPad?

No haven't tried it on the iPad but I'm thinking since even if the player is different the way you transfer music is the same so don't see why it wouldnt work that way on all devices; plus converting it to AAC is encoding it through iTunes so i don't see where there could be a problem since the topic is ios5 specific. If you have an iPad try it with one song, if it works there ya go, if not at least you know how to get it to work on an iPhone that is having the same issue with lyrics not showing up

The way you transfer music may be the same but the capabilites of the Music app are different on the two devices. The topic is iPad specific because the Music apps are different.

Ok that maybe true but you are missing the big picture. If the iPad 2 can play music backwards and the iPhone can't that doesn't change the fact that you import music to them the exact same way; the topic of the discussion is how to get lyrics to show up on ios5, not iPad or iPad2. Judging from your reply you haven't tried my method. My device is ios5 and jailbroken and I am saying that converting to AAC should show lyrics on all devices despite the capabilities of one compared to another. Why don't you try it instead of trying to convince me its not a solution because it worked first time and for every song I've converted an transferred today

Ok I see my error I am In a ___pad discussion but that doesn't change the fact that we load music the same your iTunes options is just like mine. You can highlight each song and right click and select convert to AAC just like me, and im pretty sure your iPad supports AAC files created within iTunes. I suggest you try what worked for me and if that doesn't work then what have you lost? Nothing.