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09 Nov 2006
Lyrics aggregation service missing
I have been playing a bit with lyrics of the music I play. The metadata in iTunes have a field that allow to store data. The ID3v2 tagging system of MP3's allows to store these lyrics.
Unfortunately when you rip a CD, download it or buy it from the ITMS one does not get these lyrics. This implies that one has retreive these from the Internet, via a search engine. I came across a widget, Harmonic, that retrieves the lyrics of songs that are playing and paste them automatically into the right iTunes field. It works pretty well, but I have to do the search by hand quite often (European issue?).
This brings me to two things. We really need a lyrics aggregation service with a good API. I have the impression that the data is out there, but is not aggregated. And probably a microformat to go with it. And why do we not get all this information when we get something from Internet. Publisher should pay attention to the metadata of music. (there is a similar problem with CD covers).
And why are the lyrics so hidden. I would like to see the lyrics moving by while the music is playing. I assume that this is partly due to the use of MP3 and other formats that do not allow this. And the applications do not allow this either.