Apple Music boosts K-pop with lyric translations, romanization

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Apple Music boosts K-pop with lyric translations, romanization

Published: 16 Oct. 2025, 17:55 Updated: 16 Oct. 2025, 19:02

SHIN HA-NEE
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Apple Korea showcases a phonetic lyrics service on Apple Music, which is part of its latest iOS 26 updates, with BTS's "Life Goes On" (2020) during a press briefing in southern Seoul on Oct. 16 [SHIN HA-NEE]

As K-pop continues to expand its global reach, Apple Music is stepping up to ride — and further amplify — the genre’s growing momentum.

Apple Music’s latest updates, rolled out in September as part of the broader iOS 26 launch, underscore that intent, introducing new features that would come in particularly handy for international K-pop fans, such as lyric translations and phonetic guides.

Apple Korea highlighted the streaming service's latest updates during a press briefing held on Thursday in southern Seoul, about a month after the features' global release.

Apple Music's lyrics translation and phonetic guides features, which were part of the iOS 26 updates in September [APPLE KOREA]

K-pop is among the top 10 most popular genres on Apple Music, led by streaming in United States, Japan, China, Indonesia and Thailand, according to Apple Korea. Apple Music has been actively collaborating with K-pop artists and promoting the genre’s new releases through its marketing channels. Girl group aespa, for example, released a performance video for its July single “Dirty Work” through Apple Music, which was available exclusively on the platform for a week.

Since its 2016 launch in Korea, Apple Music has been striving to strengthen its foothold in the country's streaming market, which has long been dominated by Melon and, more recently, YouTube Music.

Girl group aespa delivered a welcome message for Apple Music's press briefing on its latest updates, which was held in southern Seoul on Oct. 16. [APPLE KOREA]

Stressing that sound lies at the heart of its service, Apple cited its high audio quality, spatial audio features and seamless integration within its hardware ecosystem as key strengths that allow listeners to be fully immersed in the music.

With its latest updates, Apple Music has turned its attention to the growing trend of people listening to music in languages other than their own. As part of the global iOS 26 updates, the service introduced a lyrics translation feature.

After an initial AI translation of the original lyrics, human experts review and refine the lyrics to ensure greater accuracy and preserve cultural nuances — a slower but more precise process.

In its initial launch, the feature came in six language pairs — Korean to English, Korean to Japanese, Korean to Chinese, English to Chinese, English to Japanese and Spanish to English — reflecting the heightened interest in K-pop.

For Korean users, Apple Music plans to add English to Korean translations sometime next year.

Apple Music introduced its AutoMix feature, in which AI automatically adjusts a song's tempo to ensure a smooth transition between tracks. [APPLE KOREA]

The updates also include phonetic guides in romanization that spell out the pronunciation of lyrics to help listeners sing along to songs in foreign languages, as well as AutoMix, a feature that automatically adjusts a song's pace for smoother transitions between tracks.

Apple added that Apple Music is also available on Android devices, emphasizing its goal of delivering optimal audio quality across all platforms.

BY SHIN HA-NEE [[email protected]]