In 2006 the MPA had a crackdown on tablature and lyrics websites. I am not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure you can't just publish all lyrics, without infringing here and there.
What is your view on scraping?
It is unlikely you entered all lyrics yourself, but used an existing database. I personally wouldn't feel comfortable scraping or fetching my content from a site that hosts advertisements, and then republish those without advertisements. Did you find access to an opensource database, or is the service here more like a reversed Adblock?
I remember someone once posted about running one of these lyrics sites. I can't remember if I found it here or elsewhere.
Anyway, their point was that with a lyrics website, someone only wants to go to the website to find the lyrics. Once they have the lyrics they have no desire to look at other other lyrics - they arrive and then leave/bounce immediately. That is why the adverts on these sites are so spammy. They have to hammer you with adverts in that brief moment you are on the website, because you are not going to click through and engage with the site anywhere else. Also, since you probably don't even know what website you are on, you don't have any "lyric website loyalty", so it doesn't even matter if the ads are massively spammy.
I guess then the challenge is to make a website that somehow encourages engagement so the it doesn't have to be so spammy.
But, as a user, I don't want to engage with a lyrics site anymore than it's required to read/copy the lyrics. Simple information retrieval. Also, as a user I tend to remember which lyrics websites are more spammy than others and avoid them when doing Google search.
I guess then it is a challenge to monetize lyrics website, but someone would do a big service to humanity if he/she put lyrics on Wikipedia/Wikibooks-type website.
Interestingly, after a couple dozen lyric searches, I did develop some lyric website loyalty. I'll still come in via search and leave almost immediately after, but I'll actively look for the sites in search results. Criteria include perceived correctness, readability, and not killing my browser (relative to other sites out there).
I also like Songmeanings' comment/user input area, which usually has sensible comments I am occasionally interested in reading.
According to the legal, you are not storing the lyrics. If that is the case, where are you sourcing them from? Can you give a little background on how the site works, what it runs on and other interesting details?
Add chord charts, and I'll be a regular user. The existing tab/chord sites are just as bad as the lyrics sites for spamminess and nasty Flash ads (they're the one site I use regularly that leads me to want to install AdBlock).
Nice clean cut site..I have a few suggestions to separate you guys from the others...I would make a 'bookmarklet', a few lines of js, that will spawn a input box asking for artist/track..OR the script can manipulate the current page they are on now, by copying what they have selected, because I know alot of people including myself, who see part of a lyric from a site, or facebook, and want to find the rest....Make a nice image, with the script as the url, and instructions for the user to drag it to there bookmarks toolbar so they can search even if they aren't at your site..Also, just as buro9 was saying.....
Song Meanings/Interpretations/Understanding...
People LOVE this, and here is a great example of it->
Say 'Harry & Sally' start dating..They both go to each of there homes after there date... and sally decides to post a song on her facebook about how she feels at that moment...Now Harry is wondering if this girl is really diggin him, or looking for a serious relationship etc..So over at his house, harry logs on facebook and sees that sally just posted a song just after ther date!!! What's harry going to do??? Look up those lyrics! And he might not completely understand the meaning of the song so he looks at what others have interpreted the song as...he now sees that sally doesnt want him to speak, she knows what hes feeling... (no doubt) lol just kidding but really, crazy example...I know first hand that this goes on alot..aha but anyway, ill post some more ideas soon!
The search responses fail to find a lot of pretty standard songs (girls want to be with the girls fails to return the talking heads song, helicopter fails to return the xtc song, books about ufos fails to return the husker du song, ...). And september gurls returns the bangles cover ...
Back in 1997 when I and three others ran a record label called Jeepster, we had a few great bands on our label: Belle & Sebastian, Salako and Snow Patrol. (OK, Snow Patrol were less than great then, and perhaps now.)
One of the things I figured I should make was a web site in which fans were able to communicate with each other, the theory was simply that:
1) If fans kept the interest high between releases they'd be there still when we came with a new release
2) If someone was looking for a lyric or something they'd heard and we helped them find it, we might convert a stray passer-by into a fan
So I built something that you'd now call a crowd-sourcing site.
For every track, people could submit:
* Lyrics
* Mis-hearings
* Personal memories the lyrics evoke
* Interpretations/Understanding of the Lyrics
* Tablature for different instruments
All of which were votable so that the best tablature rose to the top, but others (perhaps harder ones) were still available.
It was highly compelling, you came for the lyrics but stayed for the personal memories and insight.
As a label we felt it was hugely successful. It definitely paid back in keeping the interest of fans, increasing that interest and creating new fans.
It worked so well that NME nominated us for best web site in their awards ceremony in early 2000 because they'd never seen a site in which the content was mostly created by fans and that the fans loved.
I left the label in 2000 to do other things. The system ticked over for a while, but the label never replaced me with another technically inclined person and when they wanted to change the styling of the song system they broke the PERL script and left it broke before taking it offline. Such a shame really.
Since then, whenever I look up lyrics, I've wondered why there isn't a comprehensive crowd-sourcing of all of the information around a song in the same vein that I did it, but including things like when it's been performed live or recorded in radio sessions. A real database about a song, what it means, who's covered it, how to play it, what it means.
The business model would be to sell stuff related to the song, affiliate fees for MP3 downloads and CD sales, affiliate link for the purchase of the official tablature books. Keep it simple, and keep adverts off of it. A wikipedia solely for songs and everything about a song.
The cost per transaction and storage is incredibly low as it's just text. And you could probably negotiate with publishing companies as right now they don't even get credit for this stuff let alone increased opportunity to sell what they have.
The PERL script in 1997 wasn't more than a simple thing that used flat files as a database for the 200+ tracks we'd released to then. Nowadays, for the complexity we're talking about, a weekend project in Django would suffice as a first pass. The hardest thing is just talking to the publishers, but truly, it's not as hard as some people imagine, there are fewer publishers than there are record labels.
Most of the traffic to lyric sites originate from long-tail search keywords (414 million global broad match monthly searches for lyrics). Your site has no Googlebot crawlable data, barring you from participating in a share of the long-tail search volume.
That's okay, for now this just exists as a solution to the problem that no lyric sites exist which are not aggressively bad. Though, we might contend that a large amount of traffic comes from the long-tail search because there is no site worth going to - ie it doesn't matter which lyric site I use, so I might as well just google it.
How about moving the logo, search box, and nav to the side when showing lyrics so that I don't have to scroll so far down below the fold to read what I searched for?
Snippets would be good too (as Google etc does) to confirm you have the right song
Please add a GET-param based search, e.g. http://songrabbit.com/search?q=sabaton+primo+victoria (BTW., no results :(), so that we could add it to browsers as webjumps/quick searches/however it's called - e.g. so that I could type just: 'l sabaton primo victoria', and the browser would take me to your site :).
And then it stores the results in a session/cookie of some sort, because you can then access the lyrics for the results by going to
http://songrabbit.com/php/retrieve.php?i=0 (specifying the index number 0 as the offset from the start of the result set)...each result is broken apart by <++>..kind of an odd way of doing things though
A great idea - I have a real need for this and loathe absolutely loathe the experience on existing sites. No idea how you turn this into a business though.
A bigger, happier font and bigger text search box would be easier and nice
I tried searching for 'Que Cera' which the definitive version was that performed by Doris Day, surely, as evidenced by first results on google, wikipedia etc.. however your results were hannah montana (twice?) and a bunch of other folks singing songs not necessarily including the words 'Que Cera' in not including the 'definitive' version of this song.
One of the other things I hate about the existing lyrics sites is that they often get it wrong.. for instance for a favorite song of mine transforming the lyric 'its not a race' to 'it is a race' (which kinda is the whole point of that song). Reliability would be a reason I'd go back to a site I trust.
I decided to test you a little bit and search for a lyric from a Janis Joplin song Another Little Piece of my Heart, "you know you got it when it makes you feel good" Without quotes this does not produce the song. Maybe increase the weight in the search results from keywords being located next to each other?
[+] [-] morsch|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] azylman|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asmallgrin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] songrabbit|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blauwbilgorgel|14 years ago|reply
In 2006 the MPA had a crackdown on tablature and lyrics websites. I am not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure you can't just publish all lyrics, without infringing here and there.
What is your view on scraping?
It is unlikely you entered all lyrics yourself, but used an existing database. I personally wouldn't feel comfortable scraping or fetching my content from a site that hosts advertisements, and then republish those without advertisements. Did you find access to an opensource database, or is the service here more like a reversed Adblock?
[+] [-] Major_Grooves|14 years ago|reply
Anyway, their point was that with a lyrics website, someone only wants to go to the website to find the lyrics. Once they have the lyrics they have no desire to look at other other lyrics - they arrive and then leave/bounce immediately. That is why the adverts on these sites are so spammy. They have to hammer you with adverts in that brief moment you are on the website, because you are not going to click through and engage with the site anywhere else. Also, since you probably don't even know what website you are on, you don't have any "lyric website loyalty", so it doesn't even matter if the ads are massively spammy.
I guess then the challenge is to make a website that somehow encourages engagement so the it doesn't have to be so spammy.
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|14 years ago|reply
I guess then it is a challenge to monetize lyrics website, but someone would do a big service to humanity if he/she put lyrics on Wikipedia/Wikibooks-type website.
[+] [-] jarek|14 years ago|reply
I also like Songmeanings' comment/user input area, which usually has sensible comments I am occasionally interested in reading.
[+] [-] biturd|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robryan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SwellJoe|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kilian|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] songrabbit|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] txt|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HaloZero|14 years ago|reply
(I really should have posted this as reply to when you mention there are no spam free lyric search engines)
[+] [-] irfn|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mturmon|14 years ago|reply
The search responses fail to find a lot of pretty standard songs (girls want to be with the girls fails to return the talking heads song, helicopter fails to return the xtc song, books about ufos fails to return the husker du song, ...). And september gurls returns the bangles cover ...
[+] [-] gruseom|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] songrabbit|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] punchagan|14 years ago|reply
Users would generally tend to search for a song's first line or most frequently repeated phrase. Search results could be ordered based on that.
[+] [-] buro9|14 years ago|reply
One of the things I figured I should make was a web site in which fans were able to communicate with each other, the theory was simply that:
1) If fans kept the interest high between releases they'd be there still when we came with a new release
2) If someone was looking for a lyric or something they'd heard and we helped them find it, we might convert a stray passer-by into a fan
So I built something that you'd now call a crowd-sourcing site.
For every track, people could submit:
* Lyrics
* Mis-hearings
* Personal memories the lyrics evoke
* Interpretations/Understanding of the Lyrics
* Tablature for different instruments
All of which were votable so that the best tablature rose to the top, but others (perhaps harder ones) were still available.
It was highly compelling, you came for the lyrics but stayed for the personal memories and insight.
As a label we felt it was hugely successful. It definitely paid back in keeping the interest of fans, increasing that interest and creating new fans.
It worked so well that NME nominated us for best web site in their awards ceremony in early 2000 because they'd never seen a site in which the content was mostly created by fans and that the fans loved.
I left the label in 2000 to do other things. The system ticked over for a while, but the label never replaced me with another technically inclined person and when they wanted to change the styling of the song system they broke the PERL script and left it broke before taking it offline. Such a shame really.
Since then, whenever I look up lyrics, I've wondered why there isn't a comprehensive crowd-sourcing of all of the information around a song in the same vein that I did it, but including things like when it's been performed live or recorded in radio sessions. A real database about a song, what it means, who's covered it, how to play it, what it means.
The business model would be to sell stuff related to the song, affiliate fees for MP3 downloads and CD sales, affiliate link for the purchase of the official tablature books. Keep it simple, and keep adverts off of it. A wikipedia solely for songs and everything about a song.
The cost per transaction and storage is incredibly low as it's just text. And you could probably negotiate with publishing companies as right now they don't even get credit for this stuff let alone increased opportunity to sell what they have.
The PERL script in 1997 wasn't more than a simple thing that used flat files as a database for the 200+ tracks we'd released to then. Nowadays, for the complexity we're talking about, a weekend project in Django would suffice as a first pass. The hardest thing is just talking to the publishers, but truly, it's not as hard as some people imagine, there are fewer publishers than there are record labels.
[+] [-] maxciociola|14 years ago|reply
1) a Worldwide licensing structure for anyone that wanted to work in the lyrics space
2) a Huge Lyrics DB properly matched with recording information (people search for artist's name + lyrics on google not the songwriter...)
3) An API
So we founded musiXmatch in late 2009 with the idea of helping anyone in the space but most of all : build the best experience around Lyrics.
Actually musiXmatch is The world's largest and Official Lyrics DB with worldwide agreement with all Top Music Publishers and +5,5 mln lyrics DB.
So now thanks to musiXmatch you don't need to deal with music publishers anymore .
Get a Lyrics API now > developer.musixmatch.com
Best, massimo
CEO & Founder musiXmatch
[+] [-] revorad|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omarchowdhury|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] songrabbit|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hammock|14 years ago|reply
Snippets would be good too (as Google etc does) to confirm you have the right song
[+] [-] songrabbit|14 years ago|reply
A couple people have suggested snippets, would you prefer the first lyrics of the song or somewhere in the middle?
[+] [-] mikecane|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|14 years ago|reply
Please add a GET-param based search, e.g. http://songrabbit.com/search?q=sabaton+primo+victoria (BTW., no results :(), so that we could add it to browsers as webjumps/quick searches/however it's called - e.g. so that I could type just: 'l sabaton primo victoria', and the browser would take me to your site :).
[+] [-] fatalerrorx3|14 years ago|reply
And then it stores the results in a session/cookie of some sort, because you can then access the lyrics for the results by going to
http://songrabbit.com/php/retrieve.php?i=0 (specifying the index number 0 as the offset from the start of the result set)...each result is broken apart by <++>..kind of an odd way of doing things though
[+] [-] songrabbit|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sid0|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] songrabbit|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gabebw|14 years ago|reply
1) Please show the first few lines of the song under each result
2) Please stack the results like traditional <li>s - the "cloud" effect makes them very hard to scan.
[+] [-] LiveTheDream|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onlawschool|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] utunga|14 years ago|reply
A bigger, happier font and bigger text search box would be easier and nice
I tried searching for 'Que Cera' which the definitive version was that performed by Doris Day, surely, as evidenced by first results on google, wikipedia etc.. however your results were hannah montana (twice?) and a bunch of other folks singing songs not necessarily including the words 'Que Cera' in not including the 'definitive' version of this song.
One of the other things I hate about the existing lyrics sites is that they often get it wrong.. for instance for a favorite song of mine transforming the lyric 'its not a race' to 'it is a race' (which kinda is the whole point of that song). Reliability would be a reason I'd go back to a site I trust.
[+] [-] dalke|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danteembermage|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] serichsen|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] songrabbit|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mleonhard|14 years ago|reply
Also list the name of the song and the artist. For songs that have been performed by many artists, you could add "Also by AAA, BBB, and CCC."