There are some names which roll easily off one’s tongue. Zazoo [No Longer Available] seems to be one of them. It seems to go well with the Chrome extension’s tagline - Don’t Just Watch Music – Zazoo It! Well, I don’t know if the name ultimately will turn into a verb, but if it does, it will mean that the Chrome extension is doing something right.

As an enabler for YouTube, Zazoo has to do everything right because it is a very crowded space, and there's a whole troop of them on the Chrome Web Store itself.

But Zazoo has managed to get its own little corner in the store. It seems to be popular with at least 22,000+ users and nice comments in the reviews. It is popular with some of our readers too as their suggestions have put it on our Best Chrome Extensions page.

What is Zazoo?

Don’t ask me what the word means. The closest I got was the name of hornbill in The Lion King. But as they say, what’s in a name…because we need to talk about what Zazoo does for us when we land on YouTube. I am supposing that you just landed on YouTube to enjoy some music. If you did, Zazoo is just the fit for you because its avowed intention is to ‘transform’ your YouTube music video watching experience.

zazoo music

Zazoo is a handy extension which neatly adds lots of information about the video you are enjoying right now. The neat thing about it is that Zazoo does not use a separate tab or take you to another page to consume the information. Or even open a sidebar. It inserts the information right there next to the music video, so it all seems so seamless. Let me take you through the whole thing with a music video I would like to watch. (Michael Jackson anyone?)

The Marriage of YouTube and Zazoo

After installing the extension, when you go to YouTube you will see that Zazoo has parked itself from and center on the homepage. It could be irritating for some, but the good thing about Chrome extensions is that you can disable them with a click. The Zazoo interface gives you jump point in case you want to explore music videos from here instead of searching on YouTube.

youtube music videos

Zazoo doesn’t take over everything because when you browse to some other page apart from a music video, you will note that it’s not there. But let’s head to the video that I want to watch (and maybe sing along too). Reach here directly or from Zazoo, the interface is different as Zazoo’s embedded features are on view now.

youtube music videos

Here’s all you can do…

1. Read the lyrics of the song that’s playing now.

youtube music videos

2. Sing along with the lyrics by clicking on the microphone icon.

zazoo video

3. Grab all the information you can about the artist or band. You get everything - photos, the artist / band bio, tour dates and upcoming events, news, Twitter conversations, all the album covers, and any related videos.

zazoo music

You can share the video using Zazoo on Facebook. A notes feature is mentioned as coming soon.

Is The Marriage A Happy One?

I went through about 20 music videos using Zazoo. It behaved very well with most of them. There was an instance of the lyrics not being visible until I selected them. In one song the sing along lyric’s speed was a bit too much so it was difficult to keep up.

But all in all Zazoo is a neat extension you would want to try out if you are a music lover and on YouTube. Sing along on YouTube with Zazoo and tell us if the match is a good one. Which is your recommendation for a similar YouTube music video extension on Chrome?