Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

LimeiBook86

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 4, 2002
8,001
45
Go Vegan
The new 1.1.3 software update for the iPhone has enabled lyrics to display for your songs. Unfortunately at this time there is no way to automatically download lyrics to your songs (However a solution using two 3rd party programs is described below!). You may be wondering how to get this working, so here is a simple guide to help get you started. :D

Find Lyrics

First you have to find the lyrics yourself, you can use Google and type in a search, for example "The Beatles Help Lyrics" and find the best result to chose. Alternatively you can visit web sites which have a database of lyrics such as this site.

Enter Lyrics

To enter the lyrics into iTunes just find the song you want to add lyrics to and select it. Right click on that song and select "Get Info", a new window will pop up with information about the song. Click on the Lyrics tab. Now just copy and paste the text from the lyrics web page into the text box and click OK.

Sync iPhone

Now as long as the music is already on your iPhone all you have to do is plug in your iPhone and sync. When syncing you will notice iTunes will say "Updating files" and will show the titles of the songs you have added lyrics to.

Viewing Lyrics

Now that you have setup lyrics for your songs it's simple to view them on your iPhone. Simply navigate to a song which has lyrics entered for it, and wait for the song to play. While the song is playing tap once on the cover art to display the lyrics. The lyrics will be displayed on top of the album as a scrollable text box. To hide the lyrics just tap the window once.

Video of lyrics on the iPhone (QuickTime video 2.6 MB)
HTML guide with images
 

r6girl

Administrator/Project Manager
Staff member
Sep 6, 2003
1,732
75
New England
nice! thanks for the guide! :)

hopefully apple will add the ability to automatically retrieve lyrics in itunes, just as can be done for album art today...
 

Rojo

macrumors 65816
Sep 26, 2006
1,328
241
Barcelona
When I saw the lyrics function, I thought it would be automatic too. I have dashboard widgets on my computer at home that can automatically retrieve lyrics for songs (not sure what source they are drawing from - probably one of the many lyric online databases). It would make a lot more sense for the iPhone to do this -- rather than have people have to manually add lyrics for every song.
 

LimeiBook86

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 4, 2002
8,001
45
Go Vegan
It would make a lot more sense for the iPhone to do this -- rather than have people have to manually add lyrics for every song.

Yeah, hopefully like others have said eventually Apple will have their own lyrics database where they can automatically be added to songs. This would make things, much easier! :p
 

LimeiBook86

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 4, 2002
8,001
45
Go Vegan
Just a little update. Here are two tools that will automate the process of adding lyrics to your iTunes songs, so you don't have to! :) Mac OS X is required but I'm sure there are similar tools for Windows versions of iTunes. :D

First off is a program called GimmeSomeTune this program displays information about the current song playing, including a pop-up window displaying the lyrics. This is good to make sure the lyrics download correctly.

Then there comes a wonderful little script called and Needle Drop. This script (once installed) will play through a selected playlist (or if you select your Library your entire library) and play each song for a selected amount of time.

Now what we want to do is have iTunes run through the whole library (or just a playlist) and add lyrics to our songs via downloading them from the internet. If you have a broadband connection you'll be ok, if you're on dial-up you may need to have the songs play longer to get the data time to download. It's best to do this overnight with the speakers muted or while you don't need to use the computer.

Once you have both programs installed open GimmeSomeTune. A music note icon will appear in the top menu in the Finder (by the clock and Spotlight). Click on that and select Preferences. Navigate to the "Artwork, Lyrics" tab and select the checkbox under Lyrics. Additionally you can enable cover artwork options as well. Now in iTunes open the library or playlist you want to download lyrics to. Now look at the top menu bar, click the little Scripts Scroll icon (between Window and Help) and choose "Needle Drop". A window will pop up asking how many seconds you want a song to play before skipping to the next song. I set it for 3 seconds, you may want to give each track more time if you have a slow internet connection. Next a window will ask you how far into each song you may want to play. I entered 0 (to start at the beginning) and clicked ok. That's all.

Now if everything is working correctly your lyrics and artwork will be loaded onto your songs. Now it's not perfect and it won't catch every song but it's better than doing it all manually. To make sure things are going well go back to the Finder and click on the music note icon again, select "Show GimmeSomeTune Window" to see the song information, or select "Show Lyrics" to show the lyrics window.

Hope this helps! :D
 

Attachments

  • tune-menu.png
    tune-menu.png
    21.3 KB · Views: 118,509
  • tune-prefs.png
    tune-prefs.png
    49.1 KB · Views: 510

Jovian9

macrumors 68000
Feb 19, 2003
1,967
110
Planet Zebes
I have a weird issue here. I have lyrics added to songs (already had them there prior to the update). When I "sync" my iPhone it will allow me to see lyrics to some songs but not all. I went back and checked and they are in the files. I also deleted these songs and put them back in, but they still will not show up on the iPhone. Anyone else having this issue?
 

ero87

macrumors 65816
Jan 17, 2006
1,196
1
New York City
On my iPhone, almost all of my songs seem to already have lyrics attached to them. I didn't do any of this manually, I don't know how it happened... but cool! The only iTunes add-on i have is SizzlingKeys - could that have been secretly adding lyrics to my songs?

Well, whatever, I'm happy :D. it's an awesome new feature
 

redgaz26

macrumors 68020
Mar 6, 2007
2,298
6
Glasgow
thanks for the guide i'm currently going through my entire itnes library using needle drop, all working very well except it thought ian brown(used to sing with the stone roses) was in broadway!!!:D:D:D:D:D
 

maclovin'

macrumors regular
Dec 20, 2007
165
0
Amherstburg, Ontario
Sorry to bring up an old thread, but for one....this is amazing!!! For another, it may help some other people who were wondering about this like I was. The method described for automatically getting lyrics is quite fast(even on a slow internet connection), and much easier than doing it manually. THANK YOU LimeiBook86!!!
 

LimeiBook86

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 4, 2002
8,001
45
Go Vegan
THANK YOU LimeiBook86!!!

Your welcome! :D I'm glad people are finding my guide so useful. I hoped it would should up in the iPhone blog here on MacRumors, but it may be a little too late for that. Still I'm glad it's helping you guys out! :) Thanks!
 

sye46

macrumors member
Jul 21, 2008
40
0
if your phone is jailbroken, there is an application on cydia called Tunewiki that will automatically find the song that is playing on your iphone and stream the lyrics from the internet on the fly and play the lyrics in karaoke style with the song (play the verse of the lyrics as the song is playing). It is awesome and works great! no need to find, enter, & sync lyrics.

http://gizmodo.com/339048/tunewiki-is-the-karaoke+like-lyrics-app-apple-must-include-in-iphone
 

mcdj

macrumors G3
Jul 10, 2007
8,964
4,214
NYC
much easier way...

1. listen to song
2. listen to song again, closer, write down lyrics in notebook
3. take photo of notebook (if all lyrics do not fit in one photo, take multiple photos)
4. sync photo(s) to iphone

tada!

lyrics.PNG
 

dccorona

macrumors 68020
Jun 12, 2008
2,033
1
much easier way...

1. listen to song
2. listen to song again, closer, write down lyrics in notebook
3. take photo of notebook (if all lyrics do not fit in one photo, take multiple photos)
4. sync photo(s) to iphone

tada!

lyrics.PNG


thats the best song ever too
 

docal97

macrumors 6502a
Jun 28, 2006
808
59
Southampton
with everything becoming wireless and many using icloud for backups, its surprising that there is no easier way to automatically add lyrics to all of your songs.

surprising that apple would not add this to the song downloads in itunes. It would make everything so much easier.
 

old-wiz

macrumors G3
Mar 26, 2008
8,331
228
West Suburban Boston Ma
with everything becoming wireless and many using icloud for backups, its surprising that there is no easier way to automatically add lyrics to all of your songs.

surprising that apple would not add this to the song downloads in itunes. It would make everything so much easier.

The labels don't allow the lyrics to be included; they want people to pay extra for the lyrics. It's not Apple's fault. The 3rd party sites that do provide the lyrics are sued regularly by the labels for piracy.
 

AuthGirl

macrumors newbie
Mar 26, 2014
2
0
Canada
on iPhone5 (iOS7)

On iTune
1. Right click on song
2. Get Info
3. Lyrics Tab
4. Paste lyrics
5. Sync your iPhone

On iPhone
1.Click and play the song
2.Where the Album cover shows -> put your finger on that spot for 4 seconds then tap! Like ____ _ (one-two-tree-four / remove your finger very quickly then tap same spot again once)
3. Lyrics shows - you can scroll up and down

---- after few times doing that should work just tap once.
 

Attachments

  • iphone_lyrics_authgirl.jpg
    iphone_lyrics_authgirl.jpg
    135.6 KB · Views: 276
Last edited:
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.