Feedback Please About Lyric Site with Over 4 Million Songs
brent...@lyricvault.com
(negative or positive) about a lyric site I am working on.
On a scale of 1 to 10 please rate following.
1. Site design. How does it look?
2. Site speed. Is it fast enough for you?
3. Breadth of Lyrics coverage. Put it to the test, let me know where
we are failing.
4. Helpfulness of non-lyric information. i.e. other albums by artist,
other top lyrics, etc.
5. Overall comparison to other lyric sites you normally use and whom
you are comparing the site to (please provide a URL so I can check out
the other site as well).
Thanks,
Brent D. Payne
CEO/Founder
Lyric Vault
http://www.lyricvault.com
R. Leitner
> On a scale of 1 to 10 please rate following.
hoping that 10 is best ;-)
> 1. Site design. How does it look?
7 - color scheme i ok; far, far too much info not only on your frontpage
> 2. Site speed. Is it fast enough for you?
10 - perfect for _me_
> 3. Breadth of Lyrics coverage. Put it to the test, let me know where
> we are failing.
5 - this could be judged if search worked
> 4. Helpfulness of non-lyric information. i.e. other albums by artist,
> other top lyrics, etc.
10 - these infos are great; but what has it to do with _lyrics_?
> 5. Overall comparison to other lyric sites you normally use and whom
> you are comparing the site to (please provide a URL so I can check out
> the other site as well).
3 - sorry but I am searching for _lyrics_
The site is for sure a pro's work. Perfectly planned and well done.
BUT ...
Are'nt we talking 'bout lyrics? I could'nt find at least one!
Searching from frontpage leads to _merchandise_ with no further link to
_lyrics_. Search via _artist_, _albums_ or _songs_ ends with a 100%
progress-bar.
I am working with Firefox 1.0.7 on Windows XP and I hope this helps a bit.
greetings from snowy austria,
Robert
--
Herr, es genügt nicht, wenn du Hirn vom Himmel schmeisst, du musst auch
treffen!
- Unbekannt -
Steve Marquis
Advanced search doesn't work.
Couldn't find lyrics.
Did find unwanted sales pitch to titles not looked for.
On 22 Jan 2006 22:18:51 -0800, brent...@lyricvault.com wrote:
>Alright so this is borderline spam but I need some good feedback
>(negative or positive) about a lyric site I am working on.
>
>http://www.lyricvault.com
>
>On a scale of 1 to 10 please rate following.
>
>1. Site design. How does it look? ----> Pretty
>2. Site speed. Is it fast enough for you? ---->Yes
>3. Breadth of Lyrics coverage. Put it to the test, let me know where
>we are failing. ----> See above
>4. Helpfulness of non-lyric information. i.e. other albums by artist,
>other top lyrics, etc. ----> couldn't see relevence to a lyri search that failed.
>5. Overall comparison to other lyric sites you normally use and whom
>you are comparing the site to (please provide a URL so I can check out
>the other site as well). ----> See above
pTooner
news:1137997131.5...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Alright so this is borderline spam but I need some good feedback
> (negative or positive) about a lyric site I am working on.
>
> http://www.lyricvault.com
>
> On a scale of 1 to 10 please rate following.
>
> 1. Site design. How does it look?
really effect anything. It is awfully busy, there is so much stuff about
albums, etc that it is hard to find the actual content.
> 2. Site speed. Is it fast enough for you?
It is WAY too slow. When you start a search, you progress bar quickly
fills, then it just sits there on black for a very long time. When it
finally comes up with it's results, if you click on the lyrics link it goes
away for another interminable time. I think if you scroll down the page
(which the design doesn't make obvious) the lyrics are supposed to be
displayed there.
> 3. Breadth of Lyrics coverage. Put it to the test, let me know where
> we are failing.
I can't find anything that works lyrics wise. Ahhh, I just had an idea and
I tryed Brown Eyed Girl. It brings up lyrics. Very few work and nothing
tells you it doesn't have it. It doesn't even have "Freebird".
> 4. Helpfulness of non-lyric information. i.e. other albums by artist,
> other top lyrics, etc.
I think the other songs is a good thing. It gives you ideas for other
similar stuff to do.
> 5. Overall comparison to other lyric sites you normally use and whom
> you are comparing the site to (please provide a URL so I can check out
> the other site as well).
When I want a lyric I just use a search engine like google and it checks all
of them. I think that's the quickest and most thorough way. As for
suggestions, most musicians would prefer to see the chords with the lyrics.
Gerry
brent...@lyricvault.com
database was being switched over and it broke the search function. The
search is working now and working well. So, if you wouldn't mind.
Take another stab at it.
Great information regarding the site though. In your opinion then,
there is too much 'other' information and you would like to see
something much cleaner that is more lyric based? Also the artist page
indeed does not have enough information regarding lyrics on the page
and I will make some design changes to keep the artist page (ex.
http://www.lyricvault.com/artists.php?artist=carrie+underwood ) more
focused on lyrics for each of the different albums for the artist. I
will continue to offer the other information but make it secondary to
the overall goal of the site of finding lyrics. I think a few small
changes will change the tone of the page dramatically.
I heard no complaint about the specialized fonts I have on the site.
So I take it that there were no messages about my use of specialized
fonts on the pages (a design concern of mine). And the requirement
from the publishers I have spoke to so far regarding the script to
disable the ability for users to copy and paste or print lyrics doesn't
seem to be a concern either. (Let me know if I am wrong on either of
these though.)
Keep the feedback coming and I will make the appropriate changes.
Thank you so much for the feedback.
Sincerely,
brent...@lyricvault.com
You are right the advanced search doesn't work yet. The site isn't
live yet and we are trying to finish it as soon as possible. Advanced
search is on the list but hasn't trickled to the top yet. ;-)
What did you mean about the unwanted sales pitch to titles not looked
for? Can you expand upon this? I am curious as to what you are
viewing more or less as spam. My greatest goal of the site is to avoid
what I feel are the mistakes of the other larger lyric sites out there
that spam the #$%^^*&& out of their users with pop-ups, annoying
banners, and even adware in some cases. I do not want Lyric Vault to
be seen as spamming. I do want to offer useful information for the
users though. I want to offer cross merchandising for the users as
well. And of course I need to develop a revenue stream so I can stay
in business. LOL However I want to make sure I do it properly to
avoid the use of promotions that appear to be spam.
Please take a few more minutes to expand upon what you stated so I can
make the appropriate changes.
Sincerely,
brent...@lyricvault.com
Excellent feedback!!
A few more questions:
1. What connection speed do you have? DSL, Cable, T1, 56K, etc.
2. How did you search for the lyrics? What page did you start with
and which specific terms did you enter into the different boxes? When
I flip on advertising for test purposes for a day or two at a time we
find that of the 5,000 or so visitors that hit the site that only 1/2
percent of searches end with a failure. However we also have an exit
rate from the search page of about 15% (exit meaning they leave the
site) which is something very concerning as the design and function of
the site should create a 0% exit rate and I will only be happy with a
single digit exit rate (can't keep everyone) from the search page. I
am very curious which artists, albums, or songs you searched for and
didn't find on the site and how you searched to find them. As my
coverage I felt was pretty good and rivaled some of the larger sites.
3. You also stated the site is too busy. This seems to be fairly
common feedback from design forums, colleagues of mine, and now even
this thread. Which sections do you find the most useful and which
sections would you remove? Is your concern primarly about the artist
page (ex. http://www.lyricvault.com/artists.php?artist=carrie+underwood
) versus the albums page (
http://www.lyricvault.com/albums.php?artist=Carrie+Underwood&album=Some+Hearts
) or the lyrics page (
http://www.lyricvault.com/lyrics.php?artist=carrie+underwood&album=some+hearts&song=jesus+take+the+wheel
) ? I ask because I realize that the artists page needs some design
changes to stay closer in synch with a lyric site versus a music site.
It was a known concern that I thought would be only a small concern but
viewing the exit rates from the artist page, as well as the opinions of
others I know, user feedback, and this forum's feedback - - - I realize
it is something I must change.
As for adding tabs . . . that is something I can't do yet and it would
open up another can of worms legally for me. Let me deal with the
publishers for just the lyrics for now and then if this site has enough
appeal to stick around (and if Google will ever index me) then I will
go for another round with the publishers to get the tabs added to the
pages (or create a sister site for tabs).
Sweet feedback so far. Keep it coming please.
My sincere thanks,
Rob Stow
> Gerry,
>
> Sweet feedback so far. Keep it coming please.
>
> My sincere thanks,
>
> Brent D. Payne
> CEO/Founder
> Lyric Vault
> http://www.lyricvault.com
>
I can't speak for Gerry, but I was unable to find lyrics for some
of my favourite albums:
Jack Greene "Humanesque"
Rough Trade "Weapons"
(The search progress bar hit 100% and the page froze there.)
Headpins "Turn it Loud"
(The search progress bar hit 100% and the page froze there.)
Billy Joel "52nd Street"
(The search progress bar hit 100% and the page froze there.)
The page has been frozen on the last search for about 6 minutes
now - time to move on.
R H Draney
>
>I can't speak for Gerry, but I was unable to find lyrics for some
>of my favourite albums:
>
>Jack Greene "Humanesque"
>
>Rough Trade "Weapons"
> (The search progress bar hit 100% and the page froze there.)
>
>Headpins "Turn it Loud"
> (The search progress bar hit 100% and the page froze there.)
>
>Billy Joel "52nd Street"
> (The search progress bar hit 100% and the page froze there.)
>
>The page has been frozen on the last search for about 6 minutes
>now - time to move on.
I picked the most "forgotten hit" I could think of (figuring the more obvious
ones will be taken care of by other people) and did a direct title search:
"Cat's Eye in the Window" by Tommy James...found nothing....r
pTooner
is really unreasonable, but I waited it out and found out I couldn't print
the page or copy the lyrics. If you leave it like that there is no reason
to bother putting lyrics on the page.
gerry
--
I have the right "NOT" to be tolerant of others because they are different,
weird, or tick me off.
<brent...@lyricvault.com> wrote in message
news:1138039560.3...@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
pTooner
--
I have the right "NOT" to be tolerant of others because they are different,
weird, or tick me off.
<brent...@lyricvault.com> wrote in message
news:1138040407.9...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Gerry,
>
> Excellent feedback!!
>
> A few more questions:
>
> 1. What connection speed do you have? DSL, Cable, T1, 56K, etc.
DSL commercial - 3meg
> 2. How did you search for the lyrics? What page did you start with
> and which specific terms did you enter into the different boxes?
I tried several things. Usually when I am searching for lyrics, I just put
in the song title since I don't care who sings it. I just tried again from
the home page. I entered strawberrys raspberrys in the title box. The
progress bar displayed for 3 seconds while it counted to 100, then the page
went black for a little over a minute. Then it displayed
http://www.lyricvault.com/search_results.php?op=search&artist=&album=&song=Strawberrys+Raspberrys
which had lots of stuff, but not the old Kingston Trio tune. I then entered
Kingston Trio in artist at the top of this page and strawberrys in the song
window. After the usual delay it returned this:
http://www.lyricvault.com/search_results.php?op=search&artist=Kinston+Trio&album=&song=Strawberrys
Then I clicked on lyrics on the line by Kingston Trio and it showed
(eventually) the available lyrics where I found it was Raspberries
Strawberries, not the other way. Then I clicked on that link, waited the
usual time and finally got the lyrics up that I wanted. Then I discovered
that I had to use a screen capture utility to print the thing. Total time,
more than 15 minutes. Then I went to google.com and typed 'lyrics
"raspberries strawberries" 'and the results came back in less than 2
seconds. 2 more seconds to choose a site, hit enter and print to have my
lyrics.
I hope that helps.
When
> I flip on advertising for test purposes for a day or two at a time we
> find that of the 5,000 or so visitors that hit the site that only 1/2
> percent of searches end with a failure. However we also have an exit
> rate from the search page of about 15% (exit meaning they leave the
> site) which is something very concerning as the design and function of
> the site should create a 0% exit rate and I will only be happy with a
> single digit exit rate (can't keep everyone) from the search page. I
> am very curious which artists, albums, or songs you searched for and
> didn't find on the site and how you searched to find them. As my
> coverage I felt was pretty good and rivaled some of the larger sites.
Your site is not entirely intuitive. For instance, if you enter Sinatra in
the artist block, it selects everything starting with "S" instead of only
artists containing sinatra. After spending a little time at it, I'm getting
the hang of it, but there really is no advantage that I can see over using
google which is many times faster.
Gerry
brent...@lyricvault.com
current search function and build it from square one again. It is
simply too slow and not accurate enough. I will let you know when the
new search is functional and perhaps you will be kind enough to let me
know your thoughts on the new search.
Thanks for your feedback.
Sincerely,
Lumpy
> Sweet feedback so far. Keep it coming please.
Via a cable connection, I searched, from the front
page for Artist: "Crosby" attempting to find any
lyrics by CSN&Y. First return was for what looks
like everything alphabetically under "C". About
8 clicks later, after continually clicking on
a particular song and the word "Lyrics", I
was finally rewarded with a page of the
actual lyrics. Yet the lyrics were not
copyable. The viewer would have to stay
right there on your silly, spam filled
page to read the lyrics.
That's nonsense.
Google the damn lyrics instead of having
to jump through all the hoops for your
useless presentation.
Lumpy
--
In Your Ears for 40 Years
http://www.lumpymusic.com
brent...@lyricvault.com
it and let me know if you feel it has improved. Also let me know which
areas I still need to improve on.
brent...@lyricvault.com
could take a peek at it and let me know what other changes I should
make, improvements you see, and things you thought shouldn't have been
changed.
brent...@lyricvault.com
I made a few dozen changes to the site. Could you take another look at
it and provide your comments regarding the new site?
brent...@lyricvault.com
I greatly enhanced the music lyrics search function.
Could you take another look at the site and let me know what you think
of the changes? Including the changes to the music lyrics search
function?
pTooner
standard "Whiskey in the Jar" and it brought up lots of hits. None of them
seemed to have lyrics, though. Yes, it did link me to a web search which
turned up the lyrics in all cases, but I could have done that just as easily
without going to your site. I couldn't find any song that you actually had
lyrics for, so I don't know whether you've fixed the print out thing or not.
I don't think you're going to fool anyone with the note saying "yours is one
of the .5% of failed searches. I was 0 for 10 I think.
Gerry
--
I have the right "NOT" to be tolerant of others because they are different,
weird, or tick me off.
<brent...@lyricvault.com> wrote in message
news:1139522273.5...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
justafin...@yahoo.com
brent...@lyricvault.com wrote:
> Okay I made dozens of changes to the site. Please take another look at
> it and let me know if you feel it has improved. Also let me know which
> areas I still need to improve on.
Ambitious undertaking -- but I get the feeling your reach has exceeded
your grasp.
You've got a huge amount of information, but I was searching for
specific lyrics (three widely divergent styles covering different
decades) and while I found numerous listings where the appropriate
names appeared, and even what artists recorded them and what albums the
songs were on, NONE of them -- repeat, NONE -- actually took me to the
lyrics for those songs. On that level, for a lyrics site, I'd rate it
Zero out of 10.
Harold Groot
Just curious - once you had asked for the lyrics and the screen
flashed (but made no obvious change), did you scroll down to actually
look for the lyrics? As has been noted several times in this thread,
there is a serious design flaw. The fact that lyrics actually have
been retrieved is not noticeable. They are going to redesign it so
that the lyrics will be on the TOP of the new page, not the bottom -
but until they fix that, you have to scroll down to find them. So it
is quite possible that the lyrics you wanted actually WERE retrieved
and you never realized it. If I had not read about this problem first
in these threads I wouldn't have found the ones I tried - as far as I
could tell, nothing had changed. But knowing about the problem I
scrolled down and there were the lyrics.
Without knowing which ones you tried to find I can't say whether this
happened to you or not - but someone else mentioned having received a
message along the lines of "no result - yours is one of .5% that got
no result". Since you do not mention having received such a message,
it seems quite possible to me that the lyrics you asked for were
retrieved and that you simply didn't know it.
brent...@lyricvault.com
lyrics and find it astonishing that there were three seperate searches
for songs in different genres and different decades that didn't return
the lyrics. It would be more likely had you searched for song lyrics
on a particular album that didn't return multiple songs. Currently the
database has holes in it by album (the terms I didn't pay for users to
take the time to submit) but very unlikely it would result in 3 failed
searches in the manner you discribe.
It is likely that my horrible design flaw of NOT putting the song
lyrics at the TOP of the page is simply making it very difficult to
find them (as mentioned by Harold below).
Try the three songs again and scroll down each page (unless I have the
design flaw fixed by the time you read this message).
Regards,
justafin...@yahoo.com
> lyrics at the TOP of the page is simply making it very difficult to
> find them (as mentioned by Harold below).
>
> Try the three songs again and scroll down each page (unless I have the
> design flaw fixed by the time you read this message).
You may be correct.
However, I certain believe you ARE correct that you have a design flaw:
it's just an opinion, but I'd say clicking on the lyric ought to take
you there -- you ought not to have to search around still further to
see if they're hidden out of sight.
brent...@lyricvault.com
top of the lyrics page. As I should have done months ago.
For example below is a link to the Nickelback Photograph lyrics:
http://www.lyricvault.com/lyrics.php?artist=nickelback&song=photograph
Note how the song lyrics are now at the top of the page.
This is thanks to quality user feedback. Let me know what other
changes you would like to see, every little bit of help goes a long
way.
Sincerely,
pTooner
the first 10, and none of them had lyrics - they all returned the "one of
the .5% unsuccessful" thing.
Gerry
<brent...@lyricvault.com> wrote in message
news:1140065927.8...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
Lumpy
> I just tried "Whiskey in the Jar" again.
> It returned 68 results. I tried the first 10,
> and none of them had lyrics - they all returned
> the "one of the .5% unsuccessful" thing.
It's right there next to
"Stoned Soul Picnic".
Lumpy
--
In Your Ears for 40 Years
pTooner
news:1140132164....@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
That is certainly an improvement. I would also suggest that you adjust the
search engine to show the songs that HAVE lyrics first. In other words, if
I search for a song and the system finds 10 or whatever versions, it should
show the one it has lyrics for first. If folks are searching for lyrics,
they aren't too interested in who recorded it.
Gerry
brent...@lyricvault.com
the lyrics plain as day at the link below:
If you are talking about another artist, let me know which one you are
referring to please.
Also, the site will show the lyrics for the song on multiple albums for
Metallica Whiskey in a Jar lyrics. You may also sort by any of the
search fields (though refining your search is usually a better option).
List all the songs whether there are lyrics listed or not in the
search field because I am hopeful that users will take the 5 to 10
seconds it takes to add the lyrics if the lyrics aren't already listed.
I will also make the .5% thing dynamic in the coming weeks and I am
tracking failed search results. The failed searches are a little less
than .5% right now.
Hopefully this helps.
Sincerely,
brent...@lyricvault.com
I see in the db that someone has uploaded the lyrics for Stoned Soul
Picnic so I will be processing her tonight and you should see it
tomorrow and for forever after that.
Man I am cravin' them there doughnie nuts. ;-)
Sincerely,
Lumpy
> Hey Lumpster,
>
> I see in the db that someone has uploaded the
> lyrics for Stoned Soul Picnic so I will be
> processing her tonight and you should see it
> tomorrow and for forever after that.
Too late -
I got them off of the first google hit I queried.
They had them, you didn't. Only took me one
mouse click. Maybe they didn't have that
army of professional programmers working
for them.
pTooner
news:1140147568.6...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> If you are talking about Metallica Whiskey in a Jar lyrics then I see
> the lyrics plain as day at the link below:
>
> http://www.lyricvault.com/lyrics.php?artist=Metallica&album=Die+Die+My+Darling&song=Whiskey+In+The+Jar
>
> If you are talking about another artist, let me know which one you are
> referring to please.
The Metallica lyrics come up on page two of the listings. I went through
the first 10 hits and never got to page 2. Apparently your search lists the
hits alphabetically by performer, and Metallica is the first hit on page
two. I think you should vary your sort order to show the ones that have
lyrics first. It's a very simple change to the query.
Gerry
brent...@lyricvault.com
>The Metallica lyrics come up on page two of the listings. I went through
>the first 10 hits and never got to page 2. Apparently your search lists the
>hits alphabetically by performer, and Metallica is the first hit on page
>two. I think you should vary your sort order to show the ones that have
>lyrics first. It's a very simple change to the query.
>Gerry
Gerry,
Where you aware that the artist to the song was Metallica when you did
the search or did you just know the song title? If you knew just the
song title I could see how this could be very frustrating to you.
However, if you knew the artist you could have jumped to the next page
of results seeing that the artist for the songs you saw before you were
not Metallica.
I am leery of sorting the results by lyrics or no lyrics because it
won't have a logical pattern for those that do know the artist. It
makes more sense to list the songs in alphabetical list by artist (and
then allow the resorting of the results by any of the fields) than to
list them by lyrics no lyrics without any other pattern. I come from
the memory industry (RAM) and have dealt a lot with online memory
configurators. I used to receive a lot of complaints that they were
not able to find their system in the Memory Locator. Come to find out
the users wanted all the results to be listed whether their the company
I worked for at that the time had a memory solution for their
particular computer or not. This way, they could determine there was
no solution and move on to the next memory site that may be able to
provide a solution. I do that now for the Lyric Vault site. I provide
the song, whether lyrics or not, and then actually make an attempt to
have the end user post the lyrics for the next user to find.
Thanks for clarifying as it helps me to discover holes in the customer
experience.
justafin...@yahoo.com
> The site design has been changed. You will now see the lyrics at the
> top of the lyrics page. As I should have done months ago.
Big improvement! I continue to be amazed at the quantity of
information you've got here, and how accessible it is.
Still, I was disappointed on searches. Here's what I sought/found:
Mills Brothers - Cab Driver (failed -- not a big surprise here)
Kingston Trio - Tom Dooley (found)
Kenny Loggins - House on Pooh Corner (failed)
Doobie Brothers - What a Fool Believes (failed)
Therefore, my search failure rate was 75%...not 0.5% or whatever
percentage it shows.
Now, granted, I'm not looking for recent stuff, so maybe that's a huge
part of the reason for the high percentage of failures, and maybe that
unfairly skews results.
Nevertheless, showing a default failure rate that isn't particularly
accurate is a bit misleading. I don't think you would do yourself any
dis-service merely to change the wording to something that doesn't cite
what the actual failure rate is.
Just opinion again (I got a million of 'em) but omitting reference to a
specific failure rate does less damage to your credibility than citing
a failure rate that *appears* to be wrong, even on a limited sample.
Michael
> pTooner (Gerry) said:
>
>>The Metallica lyrics come up on page two of the listings. I went through
>>the first 10 hits and never got to page 2. Apparently your search lists the
>>hits alphabetically by performer, and Metallica is the first hit on page
>>two. I think you should vary your sort order to show the ones that have
>>lyrics first. It's a very simple change to the query.
>>Gerry
>
>
> Gerry,
>
> Where you aware that the artist to the song was Metallica when you did
> the search or did you just know the song title? If you knew just the
> song title I could see how this could be very frustrating to you.
> However, if you knew the artist you could have jumped to the next page
> of results seeing that the artist for the songs you saw before you were
> not Metallica.
>
> I am leery of sorting the results by lyrics or no lyrics because it
> won't have a logical pattern for those that do know the artist. It
> makes more sense to list the songs in alphabetical list by artist (and
> then allow the resorting of the results by any of the fields) than to
> list them by lyrics no lyrics without any other pattern.
I disagree on this one. If I'm looking for "Whiskey in the Jar", it's
the song lyrics I'm looking for rather than whether it was Metallica or
Thin Lizzy or indeed the numerous folk versions. Do these versions
differ (deep question, there, that goes beyond the scope of any lyric
site I know incidentally)?
I come from
> the memory industry (RAM) and have dealt a lot with online memory
> configurators. I used to receive a lot of complaints that they were
> not able to find their system in the Memory Locator. Come to find out
> the users wanted all the results to be listed whether their the company
> I worked for at that the time had a memory solution for their
> particular computer or not. This way, they could determine there was
> no solution and move on to the next memory site that may be able to
> provide a solution. I do that now for the Lyric Vault site. I provide
> the song, whether lyrics or not, and then actually make an attempt to
> have the end user post the lyrics for the next user to find.
>
Hmm, maybe.
pTooner
news:1140197269....@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> pTooner (Gerry) said:
>>The Metallica lyrics come up on page two of the listings. I went through
>>the first 10 hits and never got to page 2. Apparently your search lists
>>the
>>hits alphabetically by performer, and Metallica is the first hit on page
>>two. I think you should vary your sort order to show the ones that have
>>lyrics first. It's a very simple change to the query.
>>Gerry
>
> Gerry,
>
> Where you aware that the artist to the song was Metallica when you did
> the search or did you just know the song title? If you knew just the
> song title I could see how this could be very frustrating to you.
No, I had no idea that Metallica had ever recorded this song. I did know of
a few like the Dubliners and the Limelighters.
> However, if you knew the artist you could have jumped to the next page
> of results seeing that the artist for the songs you saw before you were
> not Metallica.
That doesn't make any sense to me. If you are looking for lyrics, what do
you care who any particular artist was? It doesn't matter who the performer
is, the lyrics are written by the composer. Suppose I search for Stardust?
I'd undoubtedly get hundreds of results from your system, since it has been
recorded hundreds of times. If I was looking for the lyrics (why else would
I go to a lyrics site?) I wouldn't care who recorded any particular version.
I just stopped this and tried. Sure enough, it returns 559 results. Of the
first 5 hits, only number 2 had lyrics. Then for curiousity, I tried the
same thing listing Hoagy Carmichael as artist and Stardust as the song and
it found the song listing Hoagy Carmichael as artist, but didn't find the
lyrics. That was interesting since Hoagy Carmichael is the composer.
>
> I am leery of sorting the results by lyrics or no lyrics because it
> won't have a logical pattern for those that do know the artist.
I don't see what that has to do with it. If you search for any song, the
lyrics should be the same no matter who performs it. I just searched for
Charlene. It turned up 9 hits, and it did not return her one hit, "Never
been to me".
Gerry
brent...@lyricvault.com
>I don't see what that has to do with it. If you search for any song, the
>lyrics should be the same no matter who performs it. I just searched for
>Charlene. It turned up 9 hits, and it did not return her one hit, "Never
>been to me".
Compare the following pages. They all have the same song title but
completely different lyrics.
http://www.lyricvault.com/lyrics.php?artist=12+Stones&album=Potters+Field&song=Photograph
- 12 Stones Photograph lyrics
http://www.lyricvault.com/lyrics.php?artist=Charlie+Robison&album=Good+Times&song=Photograph
- Charlie Robison Photograph lyrics
http://www.lyricvault.com/lyrics.php?artist=Def+Leppard&album=Pyromania&song=Photograph
- Def Leppard Photograph lyrics
http://www.lyricvault.com/lyrics.php?artist=Nickelback&album=All+The+Right+Reasons&song=Photograph
- Nickelback Photograph lyrics
So as you can see, the song title isn't enough data to determine which
set of lyrics a person is looking to find. You also have to know who
performed the song. (Sure the composer or the writer would also work
but I don't have that data yet and nearly nobody searches for a song by
the composer, they search by the artist and song.)
Can you see why I don't want to sort by lyrics or no lyrics now? As
that would cause problems in the usability of the site. If more than
one artist made a song with the same song title then you will have to
know which artist performed the song for the lyrics you want. This
gets further complicated when you have songs like Garth Brooks' live
versions of songs that have added lyrics for the live versions. I
don't have a solution for this live version issue yet but working on
it.
brent...@lyricvault.com
logic regarding songs not having the same lyrics for them. Case in
point being Def Leppard Photograph and Nickelback Photograph
Justin Fletcher
> <brent...@lyricvault.com> wrote in message
> news:1140197269....@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
[snip]
>> I am leery of sorting the results by lyrics or no lyrics because it
>> won't have a logical pattern for those that do know the artist.
>
> I don't see what that has to do with it. If you search for any song, the
> lyrics should be the same no matter who performs it.
I'm not bothered about the rest of the argument, but your comment does not
follow.
There are many tracks with the same name but performed by different
artists - the usual one of which that I tend to remember is 'The Power Of
Love'. A brief check of the local collection tells me that there are 5
tracks by that name here (Celine Dion, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Huey
Lewis, Jennifer Rush, Rick Springfield), and only two of those are the
same song.
In addition to tracks that have the same name but different lyrics, there
are tracks with the same name, and which are the same original song but
which have different lyrics either because ...
* ... the performer is re-interpreting the track - they've changed the
beat, etc and so adding repeated words or extra vocal sounds of some
sort. I'm thinking of tracks like 'Where The Streets Have No Name' as
performed by U2 / Pet Shop Boys, which have different lyrics to fit
the very different sound of the track.
* ... because the performer has decided to extend the track - adding
new lyrics or changing the meaning of the existing lyrics with extra
words. Usually this is because they decided it was in need of an
update, and that god-awful version of Candle In The Wind [1]
(Elton John, original compared to the crass Diana version) immediately
springs to mind. Less annoyingly to me, The Days Of Pearly Spencer
(David McWilliams, updated by Marc Almond if I recall correctly with
an entire new verse - and I'm happy to be corrected there :-) ).
* ... because of gender-awkwardness - changing he to she, or other less
subtle changes in order to make the track which was previously
intended for a woman to be sung by a man. Sadly, the only thing I can
think of off the top of my head which is changed like this is Heather
Nova's live cover of 'I'm On Fire' (previously Bruce Springsteen).
* ... because the performer hasn't yet decided on the words to the track
and so they're just nonsense - usually in demo versions which are
subsequently released for the true fanatics to hear where things came
from. Whether you consider these to be real songs and worthy of having
lyrics is a matter for debate, but if you're going so far as to say
"artist x produced album y which has track z on it and *these* are the
lyrics" then presenting lyrics which are for the 'final' studio
version would be wrong - particularly if the user chose that version
because they WANTED to know the distinction between it and the
final version. Obviously there's many examples of this, but it'd be
pointless to give them as they tend to only matter to those fans
who care about the early/final version distinction :-)
* ... because the performer has changed the words, or added talky bits,
or otherwise tailored the track for a live audience. Most concert
versions of tracks have some extra words in them - whether you
consider the talky bits to be a part of the song's lyrics or not is
a matter for debate as well, but if the words themselves are changed -
usually for some impact at the concert (reference to recent events,
the event's locale, or things that are being tried out) - then it
makes sense to record them. Whether you even include things like 'come
on!' and 'let's see your hands at the back!' is <laugh> something
that everybody has to come to a decision on on their own.
* ... because it's a remix and some's just made a great big mess of your
favourite track. Or made your most hated track into a work of genius.
My point, long-winded though it may seem, is that whilst a song may have
been written by one person/group it does not mean that the performer's
lyrics are the same. And that even when the performer and the original
author are the same, the lyrics may not necessarily be the same.
Better still, though, (and I only discovered this a few years ago) there
are tracks by an artist with the same name on different albums which are
not the same song - I'm sure there are many of them and that it would make
an interesting amusement to find some others, but the one I found was
Chris Rea's 'Texas' [2] - the track with that name on Watersign and the
track with that name on The Road To Hell are quite distinctly different.
To my mind, that only makes the whole lyrics thing a lot more fun, though
:-)
[1] With apologies to anyone that actually liked the updated Candle In The
Wind.
[2] LyricVault lists this incorrectly - only the version from Watersign is
correct.
--
Gerph <http://gerph.org/>
... No, I'm not sleeping any more.
brent...@lyricvault.com
You want a job? Your knowledge is amazing. And you see all the
complexities of finding all the pitfalls in this lyric industry.
Things that seem so simple you realize are not at all and you can even
site examples (which is flat out scary). I have been 'discussing' this
with my programmer for quite some time now that lyrics must be broken
down by artist, album, song, version. However he claims that the
database would become extremely large to create it that way and would
slow the site down considerably. I continue to feel this is not the
case (regarding speed) and absolutely required to be a dominate and
accurate online music lyrics site.
I am very impressed with your knowledge of lyrics and would like to
have some additional correspondance with you via email if you are
interested. I am going to site your examples to my programmer as to
why this is an absolute requirement versus something that just seems
logical.
In your opinion (and feel free to respond in this post to this
question) do you feel that artist, album, song, version would cover all
of the pits that you can think of? Everyone else feel free to chime in
too.
Thanks so much for your feedback. Once again, the newsgroups are an
excellent source of information for http://www.lyricvault.com and I
greatly appreciate it.
Justin Fletcher
> Gerph,
>
> You want a job? Your knowledge is amazing. And you see all the
> complexities of finding all the pitfalls in this lyric industry.
<laugh> Well, I only know what I do from looking at how others have done
things and from my own database. I tend to be a little bit annoying about
this sort of thing though :-)
> Things that seem so simple you realize are not at all and you can even
> site examples (which is flat out scary). I have been 'discussing' this
> with my programmer for quite some time now that lyrics must be broken
> down by artist, album, song, version. However he claims that the
> database would become extremely large to create it that way and would
> slow the site down considerably. I continue to feel this is not the
> case (regarding speed) and absolutely required to be a dominate and
> accurate online music lyrics site.
I think I'd have to agree with him that it could become very large, and
you would possibly have difficulty with lyrics being misapplied
incorrectly en-masse. Even if you don't worry about the different lyrics
for live versions, etc, that Chris Rea thing ('Texas' being two different
songs - I hadn't ever even considered that an artist would record two
songs with the same name :-) ) really means you have to think about
something like that.
There was another case that I thought of when I got up this morning which
was related to the remixes - sometimes a single can have multiple versions
of the same track which are different. For the laugh. Like radio edit,
etc. Not sure that's relevant.
> I am very impressed with your knowledge of lyrics and would like to
> have some additional correspondance with you via email if you are
> interested. I am going to site your examples to my programmer as to
> why this is an absolute requirement versus something that just seems
> logical.
Feel free to re-state, or quote verbatim anything that I've said here -
it's a public forum and I'm happy for my words to be used, or otherwise
passed around. My email address is valid so feel free to contact me
privately if you don't like discussing things in public.
Just whilst on that topic, I know you've taken some bashing over setting
up the site on here (and I've been critical as well), but I like the idea
that someone setting up a site like this is taking seriously the
suggestions by people in a public forum and actually responding. I dunno,
it's just nice to see some full-circle feedback and seeing the things that
are complained about being fixed because of it.
> In your opinion (and feel free to respond in this post to this
> question) do you feel that artist, album, song, version would cover all
> of the pits that you can think of? Everyone else feel free to chime in
> too.
It would probably cover all pitfalls, but I think it will cause you
headaches... or your programmer headaches anyhow. To be complete, that
would probably do it, but the effort involved is a lot greater - not just
for the setting up of the system, but also from the maintenance point of
view. If someone goes and submits broken information into 5 different
instances of a song you might not notice. And then someone else comes
along and votes them all down, or corrects them. Depending on whether you
manually confirm the changes for robots putting spam in, etc, this might
increase the administrative load by forcing you to check the same damned
lyrics 5 times :-(
On the other hand, you could just say that that's a limitation and that's
just the way it goes. You can't do everything and have to draw a line
somewhere...
> Thanks so much for your feedback. Once again, the newsgroups are an
> excellent source of information for http://www.lyricvault.com and I
> greatly appreciate it.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Brent D. Payne
> CEO/Founder
> Lyric Vault
> http://www.lyricvault.com
>
>
--
Gerph <http://gerph.org/>
... All of my heart is burning quietly.
brent...@lyricvault.com
Think about this. There is no clean database in existance today. Not
even from the publishers (I know, despite what others on this post may
say, I am talking to a half dozen of the larger onese) is their a
database of lyrics. Imagine how powerful a clean database of lyrics
could be even if it will require me to purchase two additional 300GB
drives for the PowerEdge. My concern is site speed, because if the
site can't run at a decent speed for the users, then no one will use
the site. On my original post under a different thread weeks ago, the
biggest complaint was site speed. I made a very concentrated effort to
change that and improved it dramatically. I don't want to go backward
but I do want accurate lyrics as it provides a wider spectrum of
business opportunities for http://www.lyricvault.com.
Brent D. Payne
Michael
name is so rare I wouldn't really use it as a critical point. It is also
highly unlikely that a songwriter would sign different songs with the
same name. The publisher of the first song would be entitled to weild a
legal axe.
I would, however, like to bring up the issue of the lyricist's name
which is systematically missing from every database I've ever seen. The
lyricist is not necessarily the composer, nor the singer - as thousands
of cases show. We're talking about a Lyric vault, after all.
brent...@lyricvault.com
they have it) but . . . if you have this data, I would love to get it
from you. I need it tied to the artist, album, song, version please.
If you provide me the lyricist I will display it on the page.