Lyrics Database?

[Tsenoh]

Hello,

I know a lot of sites where i can get any lyrics i need.

I am making my own lyrics database, for my own use and for my friends.
I have some 150 srtists i like in there. It's a lot of work. I don't
mind it.

My q is this. Does anyone have any idea how and from where most of
these sites, like Leo's Lyrics site for example, get all the their
lyrics?

Who is responsible for distributing lyrics? The recording companies
and/or the artists themselves? Who/where/how do i approach for lyrics
officially for my own use/data base?

English isn't my native lang. So, prob someone may not understanding my
question. If that is the case, please ask. I'll try to explain further.

Any help will be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Tsenoh.

[Michael]

Tsenoh wrote:

Your question is clear. Most of these sites relied on people submitting
the lyrics to their favourite songs over the years. The problem is that
because of this many of the lyrics are fairly inaccurate. It is also
pretty amazing that none of them credit the actual lyricists, that are
in many cases not the performers of the song.

You should be aware that the industry in the US is beginning to move
against some of the sites, claiming copyright infringement (I think they
are more peeved about them picking up advertising revenue on the back of
their material). It has also proven extremely difficult for the sites to
obtain licences, as the lyrics belong to so many different people
(publishers, co-publishers, etc.) and someof the sites are quite small.
So I don't really see who will supply you with lyrics from the industry
side.

See an article about this here: http://www.a-lyric.com/content/view/47/2/

[R H Draney]

Michael filted:

>
>Tsenoh wrote:
>
>> My q is this. Does anyone have any idea how and from where most of
>> these sites, like Leo's Lyrics site for example, get all the their
>> lyrics?
>>
>> Who is responsible for distributing lyrics? The recording companies
>> and/or the artists themselves? Who/where/how do i approach for lyrics
>> officially for my own use/data base?
>>

>Your question is clear. Most of these sites relied on people submitting
>the lyrics to their favourite songs over the years. The problem is that
>because of this many of the lyrics are fairly inaccurate. It is also
>pretty amazing that none of them credit the actual lyricists, that are
>in many cases not the performers of the song.
>
>You should be aware that the industry in the US is beginning to move
>against some of the sites, claiming copyright infringement (I think they
>are more peeved about them picking up advertising revenue on the back of
>their material). It has also proven extremely difficult for the sites to
>obtain licences, as the lyrics belong to so many different people
>(publishers, co-publishers, etc.) and someof the sites are quite small.
>So I don't really see who will supply you with lyrics from the industry
>side.
>
>See an article about this here: http://www.a-lyric.com/content/view/47/2/

Printing the wrong lyrics is hardly as new as the web...back in the early 70s I
used to read "Song Hits" magazine, which would print the lyrics of the songs
then on the charts...(I'm not sure who this was for...people wanting to sing
along with the radio?...local musicians practicing covers for their gigs at the
Holiday Inn?)...

More often than not, several songs in any given issue would have lyrics that
were not only demonstrably wrong, they made no sense, and many times didn't even
have the right number of syllables to fit the music...(for some reason Wings'
"Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" sticks in my mind as a particularly klutzy
attempt)...and since the bigger hits would stay popular for months at a time,
you'd see the same stupid rendering of wrong lyrics for several issues
running...then about two years later they'd pop up again on the "Oldies"
page....r

[Michael]

I remember "Song Hits" too, although I didn't read it (I had probably
started reading "serious" mags like NME to go with my discovery of
"serious" music like Mike Oldfield).

M
http://www.a-lyric.com/

[brent...@lyricvault.com]

Well I may be chewing off my own arm here but . . .

I recently had an article published by the press that got the attention
of a lot of the music publishers (the people with the right to license
the lyrics). If you want to read that article then feel free but it
was little more than venting my frustration to get some attention in a
very large industry when I am a very small company.

Since that time I have spoken to a half a dozen publishers regarding
music lyrics. As of yet only one of them actually has the lyrics in a
database the rest of them, may have them but they are not in digitized
form (this is the music industry, they are a bit behind the times when
it comes to the internet), or they simply do not have the music lyrics
at all.

The good news though is that the publishers are co-operative with any
the smallest of web sites such as http://www.lyricvault.com and if you
have the right attitude a call to most of the major publishers will
gain you a great response.

And for the record, no lyric site was ever sued. Simply a press
release was made that they were going to start going after the sites if
they don't start paying royalties. Yeah they used some harsh words in
their statements about the lyric sites but no one was sued - - - yet.

The way I got the lyrics was by spending thousands of dollars on
specific (very specific) google ads and made the process of adding
lyrics to the site very easy. For the users. Sure it cost me but . .
. it got me a lot of lyrics.

Then on top of that, I added the functionality to allow users to
correct the lyrics, vote on the accuracy of the lyrics, etc. Then I
was able to determine which lyrics were not accurate by the user
feedback. I downloaded those songs from iTunes and spent the time to
listen to the lyrics, read the digital cover album (if it had one),
etc. One of the most hilarious things about the history of
http://www.lyricvault.com/about_us.php is that the song that started it
all for me, Nickelback Photograph, lyrics were actually wrong on my
site. It was voted wrong by over half the users. After comparing it
to the cover art, and listening to the song (and eventually the entire
All the Right Reasons album) I corrected the lyrics to what you see on
the page today at:
http://www.lyricvault.com/lyrics.php?artist=nickelback&song=photograph

If you want to save yourself some energy, just hack the Lyric Vault URL
and link into the site (like one of the pages above). We have a great
breadth of song lyrics and we are just getting started (literally only
4 months old). We'll have an RSS feed soon too if you would prefer
that. Beleive me I know it is a lot of work. I have an extremely
dedicated team working 18 hours a day for the past 4 months on it. Do
ask them to work that much? No, but they do.

Note: The site is slow right now as I have some hardware issues (I am
geting 4GB of RAM soon--hopefully this week) and I am restructing a lot
of the tables to make the site much faster. It is working great in our
test environment but we have to change the whole site before we can
launch with the improvements. I should have them completed in the next
couple of weeks. The new search feature [not yet live] is amazing.
And beats every other site out there. (Okay, I will get off my soap
box now.)

I hope this helps, and if not, feel free to ask more questions.

Sincerely,

Brent D. Payne
CEO/Founder
Lyric Vault
http://www.lyricvault.com

[brent...@lyricvault.com]

Hey Michael still trying to get the lyricist some credit as they
deserve. Keep up the good fight and be happy in knowing that the
publishers I am working with will be able to supply me with the song
writer information for the http://www.lyricvault.com site. If you have
any information you would like to share with me in regards to crediting
the lyricists, please call me. I believe you have my cell number. If
you prefer though you can email me at brent[dot]payne[that cool a with
the three quarter circle around it, AKA a 'at'] LyricVault.com

Keep up the good fight as you seem to be one of the few and you
inspired me to stay determined to do the same.

[Michael]

Thanks Brent.

I meant to call, but spent the week at Midem instead, which shuffled all
manner of things off the priority list.

Interesting post about acquiring the lyrics. Interesting also that no
sites have been sued yet. As you can see from my site, I feel that is
not the way to move forward. Better to create added-value in the lyrics
(like getting them right, or providing translations) than playing the
school bully, in my opinion.

But it is a complex one for the industry, as the lyrics are a part of a
larger copyright and no-one ever thought they would be of such interest.
I say that, but the UK used to have a popular magazine called "Song
Hits" in the seventies. Belgium used to run short radio programmes and
print articles using popular songs as a way to further langugage
education a few years back. So the foundations were already there.

I'll link to you during the week.

Michael
http://www.a-lyric.com/

[Underdog]

Hi, y'all,

I'm kind of new to this forum, but I'm a "lyrics hunter and collector"
for almost 20 years, 8 of which by using Internet. When I started at
Internet, there was an awesome site, called "International Lyrics
Server". That site (http://www.lyrics.ch) was the largest lyrics site
available on the net at that time, it contained about 300,000 by the
time it was shut down.

I used to contribute to it, uploading lots of lyrics from my personal
archives, and also helping on its forums of wanted lyrics. First
located in the USA (if I'm not mistaken), it was transfered to
Switzerland, as the owner thought it could avoid him to be sued, since
MPA had already threatened to sue him. It didn't work, though. At this
link you can find a very well written description of what happened:

********************************************
(http://www.well.com/~julene/articles/lyricsvariety.html)

"In mid-1998, the Online Guitar Archive (OLGA), an online library of
guitar music charts, was shut down after being threatened with legal
action by the Harry Fox Agency, which handles the issuing of licenses
and collection of royalties on behalf of music publishers in the U.S.
This was on the heels of another site's shutdown; GuitarTabs.com, which
took down content after wrangling with Warner Bros. over the issue of
perceived copyright infringement.
In early 1999, the International Lyrics Server (www.lyrics.ch) was also
shut down after music publishers got a bit medieval and sent in the
police to seize the site's computers in Switzerland; the service had
contained the lyrics to more than 100,000 songs (actually, more than
300,000 songs). After negotiations with the Harry Fox Agency, the site
has since gone back up, but users must not only agree that "access to
the ILS does not grant you the right to reproduce, copy or distribute
by any means, method or process whatsoever, now known or hereafter
developed, any of the information obtained via the ILS, including the
song lyrics contained on this site," but the lyrics are displayed in a
way designed to make cutting and pasting them difficult. (But not
impossible for those who are fluent in bypassing such systems.)"
********************************************

However, the site was definively shut down in 2001.

So I don't believe that the affirmation that no site has ever been sued
is really true, don't you agree?

Below you'll find other links that explain what happened then:
http://www.well.com/~julene/articles/lyricsvariety.html
http://www.jjkaufman.com/articles/musicdied.htm
http://www.mredkj.com/other/lyrics-interview.html
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/02/18/0928247.shtml

[Mark Rae]

"Underdog" <underdo...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1138889632.4...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

> I used to contribute to it

Me too - it's demise was a great shame.

Anyone ever hear from Erin or Johnny O...?

[brent...@lyricvault.com]

I stand correct. No lyrics sites were sued recently. ;-)

Thanks,