Yahoo adds 400,000 song lyrics to online music store

Apple Store“Yahoo Inc. is expanding its online music section to include the lyrics of 400,000 songs, hoping to strike a chord with Web surfers looking for a more reliable alternative to Internet sites that publish the words without the permission of the copyright owners,” Michael Liedtke reports for The Associated Press.

“The Sunnyvale-based company is touting the free service to be unveiled Tuesday as the Web’s largest legally licensed database of lyrics,” Liedtke reports.

“The database and licensing deals were cobbled together over the past two years by Gracenote, a digital media management specialist. The Emeryville-based company, formerly known as CDDB, is best known for developing technology that automatically recognizes the tracks on compact discs – a feature that is included in Apple Inc.’s widely used iTunes software,” Liedtke reports.

“The 400,000 song lyrics included in Yahoo’s database span about 9,000 different artists, ranging from old standbys such as The Beatles and Bob Dylan to more recent stars like Radiohead and Beyonce,” Liedtke reports. “Nearly 100 music publishers are contributing song lyrics, including industry heavyweights BMG Music Publishing, EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group and Warner/Chappell Music.”

Liedtke reports, “Yahoo is hoping its database stimulates even more traffic on its music service, which is already the most popular on the Web. Yahoo music attracted 22 million U.S. visitors last month to rank it ahead of AOL music (17.5 million visitors) and MySpace music (14.8 million visitors), according to comScore Media Metrix.”

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Adam W.” for the heads up.]
We’d like to see lyrics available via Apple’s iTunes Store. Would you?

42 Comments

  1. Tripp:

    If you have lyrics entered for a song within iTunes (Get Info -> under the Lyrics tab), then you can view them while a song is playing on your iPod the same way you cycle through the slider and album art – press the center button a couple of times.

    – Jeremy Avalon

  2. PR flackery at it’s best: 400,000 lyrics by 9,000 “different” artists?

    Whod’a thunk each of them wrote 44,000-and-change songs.

    This must be the same moron who extolls the virtures of a new house that features bi-directional stairs.

  3. Hmmmm, Yahoo is a L…o……s…..e…..r again. Found this on their internet radio section.

    Browser Requirements

    Yahoo! LAUNCHcast is currently compatible only with Internet 6.0 or higher for Windows.

    Currently, we do not support LAUNCHcast Radio for Macintosh or Firefox on Windows. If you are experiencing difficulties utilizing our service with any other browser application, we recommend trying the above versions to correct the issue.

    They just have NNN OOOOOO clue. ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />

    en

  4. “Wrapped up like a douche, another runner in the… uh, no that’s not it”

    “Excuse me while I kiss this guy… hmmmm, doesn’t sound right”

    “There’s a bathroom on the right… oh forget it! I’m going to Yahoo”

    (yeah right).

  5. @Buster: iTunes is the most popular music store on the “internet”, but since you can’t browse to the iTunes store it isn’t on the “web”.

    @MDN: I just keep the Pear Lyrics dashboard widget running at all times.

  6. Without a doubt! This is why I love competition – the lyrics SHOULD HAVE been a no-brainer, but Apple needs urging forward just like everyone else to keep pushing the bounds. I’m glad to see Yahoo keep trying to bring the fight – but I hope Apple responds soon, as they’re who I actually use for music. ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />

  7. Dude, get into the 21st century and buy a new monitor that actually has more pixels than you can count. For the rest of us the MDN font has been teeny tiny for a long time. Here’s a tip:

    Command-minus will shrink the font. The rest of us have been using Command-plus-plus countless times, actually on every single article. Now you can get a taste of what that was like.

  8. Lyrics are nice sometimes, but there’s no need to add to the space already required for your entire collection. If you want the lyrics for a song, there are lots of widgets that will get it for you, and you don’t even have to be in iTunes.

    MDN Magic Word: some, as in Some people will want lyrics all the time, but most will only want them on rare occasions.

  9. I was actually excited when I read this headline. I’ve been saying this for years that Apple needs to re-integrate lyrics with the music experience. Already in iTunes there’s a field for inputting song lyrics per song. But it’s unused by both iTunes and iPods.

    This would be the “killer app” that pushes Apple even more in front of its competitors if they included this feature into their software and hardware.

    Bring on the Lyrics I say!

  10. Absolutely, I would like to be able to get lyrics from Apple iTunes direclty. Would save me effort, time, and add to my enjoyment of iTunes and iPod. Think of the family times around the AppleTV singing caraoke.

  11. blucaso: That’s why I work for a bass scale. One day I’ll go for baroque. Just remember, if you can’t find anyone to sing with you, you have to duet yourself.

    ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />

  12. Not only lyrics, but scores (notes/chords/tabs) as well. I would be willing to pay for that option. Not $.99 but perhaps some premium over the amount for the song file itself.

    Yeah I know that lots of music has never been reduced to paper by the original artists. But transcriptions and sheet music do exist and it can be expensive.

  13. What would be nice is liner notes in pdf format along with the lyrics. The pdf files shouldn’t take up that much bandwidth to transmit and shouldn’t cost the record company anything to produce, since they have to produce files for print anyway.

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