Song lyrics heading for track information

 

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By Simon Aughton

Posted on 14 Jul 2006 at 11:39

The company that provides instant CD track information for applications including Apple's iTunes and Napster has obtained licences to add song lyrics to that information.

Gracenote, whose database is accessed every time a CD is ripped in any of dozens of subscriber applications, announced that it has obtained the rights to words of more than one million songs from major publishers including BMG, Universal and Sony/ATV.

'When we first approached the publishers with this, they were excited,' Ross Blanchard, Gracenote's vice president of business development told Reuters. 'They thought lyrics had been an untapped resource for them and there's quite a bit of lyrics being taken for free on the Web.'

Blanchard said that the company will now talk to all of its partners about its plans to offer 'legal and accurate' lyrics on the Web.

Lyrics have been available from unauthorised sources for some time. Apple has added a lyrics field to iTunes and provides the ability to transfer them to an iPod. Subsequently developers created several tools available for searching and downloading lyrics, although the practice is a breach of the songwriter's copyright.

Indeed, late last year the US Music Publishers' Association president Lauren Keisecalled for the imprisonment of the owners of websites that contain song lyrics as well as guitar tabs and musical scores.

Her remarks followed legal action by Warner/Chappell Music, subsequently curtailed, against Walter Ritter, author of pearLyrics, a popular lyric search application. Privately publishers knew that they could not justify a legal assault on unauthorised sites while they had no alternative to offer.

The deal with Gracenotes will ensure that songwriters can enjoy an extra slice of the online music cake.

'This licence creates a new revenue stream which will guarantee that songwriters are paid for their work,' said Nicholas Firth, chairman and chief executive officer of BMG Music Publishing. In fact it will mean that they are paid twice - once in royalties when you buy a CD or download - and once again in licensing fees. Moreover, not all of the anticipated $4bn in extra revenue will reach the writers, some of it will be absorbed by the publishing companies.

Blanchard said that he does not expect the additional cost of lyric licensing to have a significant impact on the price of digital music.

'This extra element should help drive sales growth,' he said. 'There are a lot of ways the services will derive value outside of adding an extra charge.'

Additional services could include the ability to search for songs by lyrics and the use of audio recognition software to identify tracks.

But before all that is possible, Gracenote's team of editors is sifting through publishers' submissions to check for accuracy and omissions.

'This content doesn't exist in a library,' said Jim Hollingsworth, Gracenote's senior vice president of sales and marketing. 'This is a painstaking process.'