Like the widespread issue of music piracy, the music industry has also been faced by the vast amount of websites illegally hosting lyrics of songs. The popularity of lyrics has grown to the point where song lyrics are already among the top online search requests. This is of no surprise, especially when someone has a tune playing in their head, but cannot name the song! This can also be partly blamed on DJ's who do not name each song after airing. But just like the unauthorised hosting of music, websites that host unlicensed lyrics not only fail to compensate composers for their work, but also often provide inaccurate and incomplete lyrics.
Yahoo! has now become the first to launch a licensed lyrics site, which will offer lyrics to hundreds of thousands of songs. However, unlike legal music download sites, the lyrics will be provided free, relying on a variable revenue-sharing agreement based on advertising to help fund the costs. This deal comes after an agreement was made between the music publishers and Gracenote July last year, which gives Gracenote the rights to lyrics from the North American catalogues of many of the big music publishers.
By licensing lyrics, this will help boost the music publishing revenues by as much as $100 million annually in about 10 years. When Gracenote acquired the rights to the vast library of lyrics, it mentioned that checking these for accuracy and omissions was going to be a very tedious process, one the likely reasons it is not until now that they are being made available online.
Thanks to GristyMcFisty for letting us know about this news.
