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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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According to Reuters, Gracenote is in talks with Apple to supply music lyrics for Apple's iTunes. Gracenote currently holds the rights to legally distribute lyrics from BMG, Universal Music, Sony/ATV and other content providers, and is used by iTunes to query CD track names.

Yahoo announced today a similar partnership with Gracenote to provide an ad-sponsored online music lyrics service.
 

reubs

macrumors 68000
Jun 22, 2006
1,869
187
I think this would be great, esp. if along the lines of "Get missing Album artwork". I don't like scrolling through music to get lyrics, and it would be great for that just sort of "happen". Let's hope this comes true.
 

GoCubsGo

macrumors Nehalem
Feb 19, 2005
35,742
153
wow this would be great! Although not all my music comes from those labels so I'm still going to use Canto iPod. :)
 

Luis

macrumors 65816
Jul 19, 2006
1,227
0
Costa Rica
Would be cool if they implement lyrics into search, so If you do not know a name of a song you want to buy you search for the lyrics. Excellent
 

TheAnswer

macrumors 68030
Jan 25, 2002
2,519
1
Orange County, CA
This would be awesome...but it figures they would get the feature right after I used a widget to add most of mine in...I hope they will replace the current lyrics, because some of the widget added ones have spelling errors and/or mistakes.
 

roland.g

macrumors 604
Apr 11, 2005
7,414
3,153
I just hope it works better than the Album Artwork b/c a lot of my albums are the wrong cover art. I ripped my own Led Zeppelin CDs but when iTunes pulled down the album art off of iTS, I got Dread Zeppelin cover art instead. :eek:
 

aafuss1

macrumors 68000
May 5, 2002
1,598
2
Gold Coast, Australia
Finally-the Lyrics tab when you are editing a song's properties will be useful.


When does Yahoo! launch its lyrics service? Apple can't be far behind, I guess.
 

nagromme

macrumors G5
May 2, 2002
12,546
1,196
Karoake needs timing info too, though--lyrics text is not enough. Although some kind of manual "space bar for next line" system could help.
 

Yurtra

macrumors member
Feb 12, 2007
32
0
So, it turns out that Apple's ultimate plot to capture the living room has become clear...


STREAMING KARAOKE THROUGH :apple:TV!

Surely it will be the next biggest craze? :rolleyes:
 

RMD68

macrumors 6502
Jan 7, 2007
283
10
I'm assuming that this feature would only work with purchased music from iTunes.
 

Doctor Q

Administrator
Staff member
Sep 19, 2002
39,835
7,636
Los Angeles
I'd love to have this feature, and I've suggested it in the past.

My guess is that acquiring lyrics would work like album artwork. Playback could be in the full-window (like the Visualizer) or in the Now Playing/Selected Item pane on the left (like album covers).

I wonder if lyrics will autoscroll in sync with the music? That would be really impressive!
 

samh004

macrumors 68020
Mar 1, 2004
2,222
141
Australia
Implemented properly this could be a really cool feature. However 3 things I would want to know would be, would it be free ? -Like album artwork, or an extra fee. And how much space would it take up, I have nearly 10k songs now, will that eat up a lot of space (i know it's just text, but still).

Lastly, would subtitles come to TV shows and movies too, they could go in the lyrics column, and be put on screen if necessary, right ? If your going to do it with songs, why not movies too ?
 

samh004

macrumors 68020
Mar 1, 2004
2,222
141
Australia
TUAW has confirmed this story about Apple likely adding lyrics at:
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/04/24/gracenotes-and-itunes-in-lyrics-talks/

In fact, you can already manually add lyrics (say from the new free Yahoo service) to your existing MP3 or M4A (AAC) audio files. See the tutorial posted here for the step by step method to add and display lyrics on your iPod using iTunes:

http://www.tuaw.com/2007/03/15/howto-lyrics-on-your-ipod

Well I knew about adding lyrics to my songs manually, but I didn't realize those lyrics then showed up on my iPod, cool! I'm gonna try this out when I get home.

You could even use this feature to remember a PIN or password if your forgetful, adding it to a song that you'd remember to check, but would be cryptic enough for people not to realize it's there. Yes I know, pretty dangerous, but it could be useful.
 

SciTeach

macrumors regular
Apr 18, 2006
103
0
NEK
Yea!:) I really didn't like copy & pasting.

And I finally get to find out the lyrics to Louie, Louie.:D ;)
 

mara

macrumors newbie
May 5, 2003
27
0
Helsinki, Finland

ClimbingTheLog

macrumors 6502a
May 21, 2003
633
0
I just hope it works better than the Album Artwork b/c a lot of my albums are the wrong cover art. I ripped my own Led Zeppelin CDs but when iTunes pulled down the album art off of iTS, I got Dread Zeppelin cover art instead. :eek:

Ack, I never noticed - mine too. Sounds like a joke on us.

Karoake needs timing info too, though--lyrics text is not enough. Although some kind of manual "space bar for next line" system could help.

Hey, if iTunes submits this info back to Apple (in the TOS, of course) a vote-tallying algorithm can then cull the accurate information and redistribute the data to other users. I'm guessing GraceNote does not have the timing data.

So, it turns out that Apple's ultimate plot to capture the living room has become clear...

STREAMING KARAOKE THROUGH :apple:TV!

Karaoke isn't just singing lyrics over a song - the original lyrics need to be gone from the track. There are some signal processing algorithms to do this, and on older music it works better, but I haven't seen one that's close to 100%. I can't imagine Apple launching Karaoke half-assed like this, but there is probably an opportunity for a thrird-party plug-in for iTunes to get 'good-enough' results.

A wireless Mic (white plastic, of course) would be a good use for the USB port on the :apple:TV.
 

dernhelm

macrumors 68000
May 20, 2002
1,649
137
middle earth
'Bout time. I never did understand why it was such a big deal to pull the lyrics for a song. I can purchase the song, but actually understanding what they are saying? That's another matter.... :rolleyes:
 
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