What's that Space Cowboy? Last.fm Adds Lyrics
Last.fm, one of our favorite music recommendation and discovery services, announced a partnership with LyricFind today, which will bring lyrics for about 800,000 songs from major and independent labels to Last.fm. This will make Last.fm the only music recommendation service that features lyrics on its site. Last.fm users will now also be able to search lyrics on Last.fm, which is especially helpful if you are looking for a particular song, but cannot remember the actual title.
If available, Last.fm will now show excerpts from a song's lyrics on the relevant Last.fm track page and users can then click through to see the complete lyrics. However, Last.fm has missed an opportunity here, as you can't actually look at the lyrics and play a song at the same time, unless you open up a new tab for the lyrics page.
Sponsored Lyrics Pages?
Interestingly, Last.fm also announced that it will allow sponsors to advertise on these lyrics pages, including the ability to skin the entire page. We cannot help but wonder if this is a prelude to similar advertising options on other parts of Last.fm's site.
800,000 Lyrics
Even though 800,000 is a large number, this still leaves the majority of Last.fm's catalog without lyrics. The music industry has always been highly protective about lyrics and has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with many of the independent (and often user generated) lyrics sites.
LyricFind, too, started as a rogue lyrics site in 2000, but has licensed content from over 1,700 music publishers since then, including EMI, Sony, and Universal BMG.
Overall, adding lyrics to song pages is a smart move by Last.fm, as it turns Last.fm into even more of a one-stop music experience and also gives the service yet another feature that sets it apart from other music recommendation and discovery sites.
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This is a great thing they are doing. For 40 years I've been making up my own lyrics. I will finally get to see what the real ones are.
Hope they are better than mine!!!
For the record, MOG.com, which is also technically a music recommendation site, also features extensive lyrics.
This is a brilliant move by Last.fm. With their excellent iPhone app, and now this, they are firing on all cylindars.
Firefox and Last.FM just got a whole lot better with Fire.FM add-on for Firefox.
Totally rocks and makes Firefox a music jukebox! No need to be on any site just listen to your Last.fm scrobbled artists via small toolbar that rests bottom right of Firefox!
This is great news. Lyrics have always been the thing the industry had no idea how to work on. Yet terms such as "song lyrics" frequently hit the top 10 search terms.
I have never really understood last.fm, but it is good to see they are still trying to develop their service. Plus was nice to see the acquisition by CBS didnt really have any lasting effects!
Steven Finch
http://crenk.com
It was always puzzling to me that record companies did not simply encode all lyrics into their digital music. It is simple to do so. I suspect they are trying to protect the uniqueness value of liner notes and CD sales.
If so, the record companies missed a big chance to provide a differentiated, better product than pirated music early on, because encoded lyrics would not have been available through a sound card copy.