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February 26, 2006
Lyrics Legal Frontier
Lyrics are proving to be the next legal frontier facing the music industry. Back in the days of physical distribution, I'd estimate that 50 to 70% of LPs and CDs came with lyrics. Rare were the occasions where the consumer was asked to pay additional money for lyrics. Back in 1978, I sent a check for $0.50 and a SASE to Setauket, LI as requested on the back of Blue Oyster Cult's Spectres album and a few weeks later received photocopies of a computer (UNIVAC) printout of all of BOC's lyrics wherein I was able to decipher such nuggets as "I plot your rubric scarab." In today's music download world, lyrics are not part of the equation.
There is no doubt that there is monetary value in supplying lyrics to consumers for all their digital music files. Some MP3 players have menu options to display song lyrics. Even back to the mid to late 90s, site such as Lyrics.ch offered lyrics but, after legal wrangling, search results only offer links to dodgier sites. Recent rumblings in the news have centered around the PearLyrics and Warner-Chappell dispute (PearLyrics is no longer avialable though the dispute seems to have been resolved amicably) and other potentially legal arrangements (LyricsFind.com and Ted Cohen's words).
As is often the case with these features, the big question is "who pays?" Consumers had been conditioned to getting lyrics for free most of the time. Online sites with user-submitted interpretations of lyrics (REM and Cocteau Twins are always good tests on these sites) are often incorrect but suitable. Either way, the opportunity exists for a service to offer an end-to-end service parallel to what WMP does for album cover art when transfering to a PMC -- ie, ensure the lyrics are available on all the devices along the way.
Posted by raza at February 26, 2006 11:07 PM
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