Google Partners With LyricFind To Display Songs Lyrics In Search Results

Google has signed a multi-year licensing deal with LyricFind, a Toronto-based firm that provides lyrics of songs. As a result of the collaboration, users will now see song lyrics directly in the search results, both the companies have announced. From a BillBoard report:A query for the lyrics to a specific song will pull up the words to much of that song, freeing users from having to click through to another website. Google rolled out the lyrics feature in the U.S. today (June 27), though it has licenses to display the lyrics internationally as well. While the terms of the deal weren't disclosed, LyricFinder Chief Executive and co-founder Darryl Ballantyne projects publishers and songwriters seeing "millions" of dollars in additional revenue from this arrangement.The move comes six years after Microsoft partnered with LyricFind to display lyrics on Bing.com (Archived link).

internationallyricdatabase

[fluffernutter]

Does anyone remember this site? They were shut down because allowing searches on lyrics and providing lyrics were deemed to be a copyright violation. People argued that getting the lyrics in the cd jacket was part of the allure of buying the product.

Re:

[PopeRatzo]

I must be missing something in this story. I don't remember ever NOT getting lyrics in a Google search. Right now, I'm going to do a search on, I don't know..."Biz Markie Just a Friend lyrics".

https://www.google.com/webhp?s... [google.com]

So what exactly is the change that Google's announced?

Re:

[fl_litig8r]

I think what you're missing is that the actual lyrics will now appear in the search results, instead of just links to pages with lyrics. This happens now with certain other searches, like "what day is labor day 2016" [google.com]. It gives you the answer directly in the search results.

Re:

[fred911]

The difference is that the provided lyrics are authorized by the license holder and are of higher quality and accuracy than links to unlicensed providers.

  As a result you will probably see licensed results ranking higher than others.

Re:

[PopeRatzo]

The difference is that the provided lyrics are authorized by the license holder and are of higher quality and accuracy than links to unlicensed providers.

I don't believe you.

I'm going over the unlicensed lyrics to the Biz Markie song that I found on Google and comparing them to the actual song. Since there is no difference, I don't see how licensed lyrics are going to be more accurate. I also don't see how licensed lyrics are going to be of a higher quality. Do you mean they'll be in a fancier font? Wil

Re:

[fred911]

" How are the licensed lyrics going to be of a higher quality?"

Simple... licensed lyrics are authoritative and the source can be trusted. Just because you see a correct response in a yahoo or answers.com Q&A page doesn't give it any credibility.

"Will the licensed version correct grammatical errors?"

A licensed version wouldn't have errors by nature.

Re:

[PopeRatzo]

Simple... licensed lyrics are authoritative and the source can be trusted. Just because you see a correct response in a yahoo or answers.com Q&A page doesn't give it any credibility.

We're talking about song lyrics here. There's no reason to believe that Google's source will be any more accurate than the many web sites and wikis that focus on lyrics.

Re: Those poor lyric websites

[Anonymous Coward]

Google removes ad revenue from translated websites too. Even when you dont work for the man, you are working for the man.

Search syntax

[QuietLagoon]

It would be nice if google implemented a "lyrics:" keyword, much like the "site:" keyword. That way, I could enter into the search box something like...

.
lyrics: streets of london

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's pathetic compared to the DuckDuckGo bang syntax.

Normal search query (search in DuckDuckGo): "streets of london"
Redirect search to Google: "!g streets of london"
Redirect search to Bing: "!b streets of london"
Redirect search to Wikipedia: "!w streets of london"
Redirect search to google maps: "!maps streets of london"
etc, etc, etc.

See here: https://duck.co/help/results/s... [duck.co] and here https://duckduckgo.com/bang [duckduckgo.com].

DuckDuckGo's results often aren't the best, but they make it up by having a damn nice interfac

Re:

[QuietLagoon]

I agree about duckduckgo. I use it frequently.

Re: Search syntax

[BLToday]

Thanks for the DDG info. Didn't know about it. DDG is now my default search engine on every device since it doesn't get in the way with overbearing ads.

Re:

[lgw]

Normal DDG search for lyrics will show you the start of the lyrics above the search results (much the way most searches show the start of the wikipedia article above the other results).

!lyrics would be nice though.

You left off the absolute best DDG feature though: !wa for Wolfram Alpha Try this search:

!wa e^x+e^-x

Best online calculator in the world, because it does so much more than compute results. It will show you graphs of the above, tell you that's the same as 2cosh(x), and so on. The integral solver

Worst-case test

[PPH]

It works with Louie-Louie.

"Did a tiger just run out of my Butt?"

[goombah99]

Of course one reason to look up a song is because you misheard some lyrics and want to know what the song was. 'scuse me while I kiss this guy. So I wonder if it can do soundex matching?

Personally I would prefer if it gave the Literal or Bad Lip Reading version of the lyrics as well. "who has two thumbs and likes BJs?" "Did a tiger just run out of my Butt?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

Re:

[tepples]

Of course one reason to look up a song is because you misheard some lyrics and want to know what the song was.

Misheard lyrics are more likely to pull up misheard lyric sites like amiright.com, provided that someone else misheard them the same way. Unlike the major lyrics sites, these don't have quite the same pressing need to license lyrics from the publishers, as there's a clearer fair use argument for their presentation of 1- or 2-line snippets in the context of comment on the vocal style of a popular recording.

Google would prefer that you buy and carry a smartphone and subscribe to cellular data so that you can

"Much"

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> A query for the lyrics to a specific song will pull up the words to much of that song

"Much"? Why not "ALL"?

>> LyricFinder Chief Executive and co-founder Darryl Ballantyne projects publishers and songwriters seeing "millions" of dollars in additional revenue from this arrangement.

Well...at least one of those two groups, right?

Re:

[coofercat]

I was wondering how these "millions" might be made. I had to RTFA to find out that every time a lyric is displayed, someone gets paid.

So it seems simply typing something like "streets have no name" into Google will mean some twat who wears sunglasses indoors when it's not sunny gets paid some money. I guess it starts with LyricFinder, who collect a small amount from Google. They take their cut and pass on a small amount to , who takes their cut and passes on a small amount to . So it goes on, several dozen

Re:

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> I'm wondering what Google's revenue stream is here

Same as it ever was: ads. However, not instead of individual lyrics sites getting a portion of the ad click-dollars, Google gets the whole payment instead.

Dr. Know

[kwoff]

"Starving minds, welcome to Dr. Know, where fast food for thought is served up 24 hours a day... in 40,000 locations nationwide. Ask Dr. Know. There's nothing I don't."

Will be interesting

[Sir_Eptishous]

when Google has so much power over what we can search for and the results that we get, that they will be able to(at first) subtly modify things, whether its song lyrics or news or opionions, etc;
Wait, they are already doing that...

Re:

[The-Ixian]

I have been using Bing exclusively for the last year. I will occasionally do a cross query to check the quality of the results and it has never been an issue. If I cannot find something on Bing, I cannot find it on Google either.

I also find that Bing has been innovating in search result (don't know what to call them) gadgets. For example, Bing has an inline base64 encode/decode function... you don't have to head out to a 3rd party site.

Call me a shill if you want, but I don't think that Google has the domin

Re:

[CaseCrash]

I agree with this. I'm about 80% google on my computer because I prefer chrome to Edge, but I'm 99% bing on my phone. No real difference on results, but the little extras are slightly better on bing.

My one cynical thought on this is where are all the people who always say "Microsoft just copies other people" and now here's something they've been doing for 6 years and now google is copying. And... silence?

This isn't News

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been enabled for quite some time.. i don't get the news here, this was not JUST enabled. Two years ago: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-lyrics-19613.html

Well this one worked

[Big Hairy Ian]

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp... [google.co.uk]