Slashdot Mirror
Music Industry Looking for Lyrics Payoff
theodp writes "U.S. digital entertainment company Gracenote has obtained licenses to distribute the lyrics of more than 1 million songs. Music publishers are still mulling legal action against Web sites that provide lyrics without authorization." From the article: "Ralph Peer II, Firth's counterpart at peermusic, said licensing lyrics should boost worldwide music publishing revenues, estimated at about $4 billion annually. Peer said he hopes the unauthorized sites will seek licenses. 'I think we'll see a reasonable increase, as much as a 5 percent increase, in industry music publishing revenues five years out from where we are right now,' Peer said."
WHere are all the comments?
stop listening to anything for fear of prosecution.
I don't know what else to say.
Do not be alarmed. This is only a test.
Not content with a life of disconnecting IRC users for fun, he's now joined the music industry? What a bastard >:|
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Now all we need is some form of DRM that makes you pay every time you read the lyrics, or someone reads them to you. And then some lawsuits for people that steal the lyrics by transcripting, storing or sharing them with others... Because we all know you just cannot remember and or write down stuff you hear on television or radio, or even worse, save other people the hassle of having to write them down themselves...
It's 'bout time them lyrics-stealing pirate bastards start paying for their criminal behaviour...
There's no way Gracenote would make a deal like this unless they had an agreement that the record companies would bludgeon Gracenote's competition to death with copyright. It's no problem for the record companies and it makes what they are licensing to Gracenote so much more valuable.
It will probably be easier than going after people who share MP3s - lyrics sites are generally ad-supported, with the ad providers like Google mentioning copyright problems in their terms & conditions, so there's no need for lawyers, just complain to the advertisers and "cut off their air supply".
This won't be the first time this has happened, either. Anybody remember lyrics.ch? Raided by the police for telling people the words to songs! Does it get any more ridiculous?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Slashdot wont even let me infringe even on lyrics. Stupid "too few characters per line".
B@stards.
Eventually the media companies are going to push too hard. Many big companies like to ride the line, and it seems legally that with the current political influence they have the media companies can keep on moving that line so they don't cross it. The question is, where has the consumer market set that line? People might express some negative feelings about record companines extorting money from single mothers living in poverty, but they still keep on buying, so I guess that line hasn't been reached yet either. There's too many other things to worry about these days...like not being able to post a comment on slashdot for 6+ hours because Database maintenance is taking place. Noooo!
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
Fair use is no longer an option and we can look forward to root kits on our computers to 'crack down' on illegal copying? I think it is time to tell the recording industry how we feel about their draconian measures. Could you go without purchasing or even downloading music for 3 months? 6 months? a year? to prove a point?
Top Ten Things the RIAA would Like To Make Illegal
10. Whistling, humming, scatting, finger snapping, head bobbing, and any other form of "grooving" (per the Groove Memorandum of 1982.)
9. Refusing the blue pill after attending an Outkast concert.
8. Not answering your cell on the 1st ring in order to hear to more of "Clocks."
7. Fair use? More like "unfair abuse", am I right!?
6. Quoting Taking Back Sunday on mySpace.
5. Thinking about quoting Taking Back Sunday on mySpace.
4. Thinking about thinking about quoting Taking Back Sunday on mySpace.
3. Being Taking Back Sunday. (I kid, I kid.)
2. Transferring all your iTunes songs to your new bigger iPod. (You've got money for a new bigger iPod, don't you?)
1. Not handing them all of your money, every day, the second you earn it.
Worse still, it will likely put this guy out of business, and that would be a cryin' shame.
When all lyrics are downloaded, and none have to be interpreted, something very important but likewise intangible about rock-n-roll is lost.
Tom Waits, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Woo Woo Woo.
I think this is just the music industry looking for revenue where they had previously written it off. Remember that they sued lyrics.ch (the original lyrics site) out of existance right before the MP3 phenomenon hit. Then when MP3's hit, people "stealing" lyrics (yeah, it even sounds funny...) looked like small potatoes compared to people "stealing" whole songs. Now that the've more or less accepted the fact that they're not going to be able to eliminate P2P completely, they're going after revenue wherever they can. I think it's going to be interesting to see them go after sites that are hosted in other (non Western friendly) countries. It'll be easy enough to take down the ones in the US, but I doubt they'll have much headway in Belize, Romania, Estonia, etc. They're having enough trouble with AllOfMP3.com, and that's in Russia. (I think)
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
I believe it was the position of lyrics.ch (long since driven out by music publishers) that the lyrics they post are not the lyrics to the songs per say, but the interpretations of the lyrics made by their users. Yeah, that didn't work either. (sigh) You'd think publishers would realize that easy access to their lyrics makes their product more valuable, not less...
On the one hand, this is another of those "it's our intellectual property, dammit" cases that seem so ridiculous - what is to stop lyrics sites from setting up shop in e.g. Russia, where it might be legally impossible to shut them down?
On the other hand, I hate those lyrics sites so much, I wish they would find a way to shut them down. They contain ads, popups, sometimes malicious content, and on top of that they often have mistakes in the lyrics.
So, I'm not sure I care that much about this one, personally.
While this is certainly their right, as they own the copyright to the music, I wonder why they will bother doing this. Lyric sites help to sell more music, which is the industry's primary source of income. Most of the current sites will just come down, because the ad revenue won't cover the cost of the servers, bandwidth, AND licensing. My only hope is that the one or two sites that will remain will stay free to visit and rely on ad revenue.
Put identity in the browser.
Have "singers" mumble out incoherant words during "performances" then charge fans for the lyrics, so that they can see if said lyrics are "deep." Either that, or they can sue the fuck out of people.
I suppose either is a "good" current business model for the RIAA. I wonder when they're simply going to try to make music people want to hear again?
How long is it going to be before we have to start hiring hitmen on the **AAs before this insanity stops?
Will these official lyrics come in encrypted, DRM'ed text files, and you aren't allowed to sing along once your licence runs out? :P
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
The only way to sell music is to raise a conscious desire to buy it in the minds of potential buyers. Exposure to the lyrics is one of the simplest ways for songwriters to encouarge people to think about the music they write and expose others to it in a way that has no meaningful way of allowing them to substitute copyright infringement for actually buying the song. Guitar tabs, for example, are useless by themselves. They form typically just one of four components to a song, but someone playing the tabs down the hallway at college or on stage at a local bar raises consciousness of the song.
"Rights, rights, rights" is the mantra of the industry and why they're so amazingly stupid. The only way to sell a cultural work is to make it part of the culture and locking it up in a maze of contract law is not going to do that. Let people violate your Happy Jolly Lawyer Land Contract Rights all day long on things like lyrics. If you're in the business of selling **songs**, and that's how songwriters make most of their money on average, you WANT people sharing the lyrics and posting them in public. It's not the song, it's not even part of the actual audio they'll enjoy. It's just a collection of written words that they'd never have a reason to buy on their own as... surprise, surprise THEY'RE NOT MUSICIANS!!
Meanwhile, most musicians, when given the choice, will gladly buy your sheet music at a reasonable cost if it means they get a 100% accurate set of sheet music with lyrics.
And they wonder why music sales suck. Besides that there is nothing good coming out anyways, lets just go and make part of listening to music enjoyable, unenjoyable. I know half the part of liking music, is learning lyrics. For me anyhow.... How soon will this affect stuff like guitar tabs? Oh no, there's lyrics in those too, when am I going to have to pay for tabs now? Morons.....
Didn't the RIAA already give up on downloading via a W.-style "Mission Accomplished" statement? Or is it that media companies intend to fully piss off thier target audiences to the point where no one cares about thier goods anymore?
In other words : someone with a highly paid job inside a big corporation woke-up from his mid-afternoon doze and suddenly had a new idea :
Let's start charging money for something as stupid and obvious as song lyrics. Why haven't we though before ? There's so many new ways to rip money from our client base !
More money for my pocket and we can use the image of a starving artist to instill guilt inside the client's head. Just hope they won't notice the pointlessness of some recent work.
Yeah, let's call all free-rider that did provide the same service on their website "Pirates".
They're pirate ! They're ripping money from our starving artists. Think of the children, you terrorist !
Photocopying lyrics is killing the music indurty ! Pay us more for this service.
Let's launch suits against those pesky lyrics-pirate.
Are your dollars are belong to us !
You are on the way to legal actions !
Take off every 'Lawyer' !
For great justice and money !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You know I was talking to some kids the other day, and they like to get together and download tabs and cover other bands songs! Songs that don't even belong to them! They ought to crack down on that too. And whistling and humming, I think those are big problems. Ooh and maybe they could hide razors in their packaging to slice their customers.
I went to a series of concerts in York (UK) last week as part of the York Early Music Festival. Will they be looking to enforce copyright on the pieces that Micrologus did from 15th century Italy?
..for them to come after guitar, bass, and drum tab sites. And declaring war on the next generation of fledgling musicians coming up and trying to learn how to play.
Apparently, being self-defeating isn't easy. You have to work hard to alienate the customer.
Though I'm suprised there isn't some kind of swell of independent labels being formed and touting themselves as NOT being part of the RIAA. There's a market opportunity out there.
Now, I might consider buying a bulletproof jacket, just in case the RIAA sends a couple of goons down my street...
(and before anyone asks, no, I've never had any neighbor complaining about my singing :-)
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
This strikes me as pretty ridiculous. The lyrics are only part of the song so I'm at a bit of a loss to understand why the music companies should be allowed to control them in this way.
Does this mean that you shouldn't sing a song out loud in a public place as this could be considered 'publishing' the lyrics such that other 'unlicensed' individuals could collect this information in some way...?
Obviously corporations will try to squeeze the last cent from any asset but shouldn't some judge with a bit of common sense just tell them to go away and stop wasting everybody's time and money ?
Ridiculous. Lyrics are supposed to be free, and printed on the album liner, just like always...oh, wait, there's no room anymore on the teeny-tiny CD insert. Well, there is if they choose to spend a few extra cents and make it a booklet. The point is, NOBODY is infringing anything by trying to find and understand the lyrics to a song on a CD they have bought, or even a song they heard on the radio and are contemplating buying.
assert(birth_date<time-86400)
Lyrics are basically poems set to music. I've seen a bunch of poems from various poets online for free. The question I have is: Why are those poems free while the lyrics are going to be not as free?
Funny createSig(Witty remark, Odd reference)
{
return (Funny)remark + (Funny)reference;
}
The most common way I discover new music is hearing it being played -- in a cafe or store, typically -- deciding I like the sound, and remembering a unique-sounding snippet of lyrics to Google later. That gives me the title and artist. From there I can buy the track on Rhapsody, or even buy the CD.
If they shut down the lyrics sites, I will buy much less music. Nice work there, RIAA.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
I can see the commercial:
"Did you like Bob's latest song? Did you understand a single word he said? Well now you can understand them all! Call 1-800-LYR-IC4U, operators are standing by."
who buys CDs anymore from the big companies, anyways?
i occasionally buy some from indie lables and such or an artist who really deserves it, but i just don't feel like paying $15+ for a crappy cd.
Of course, you could use pen and paper to just write down the lyrics of a song. Therefore it's about time that a fixed payment per pen and per sheet of paper is demanded, compensating for the possible loss of income due to writing lyrics down yourself.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You know, back in the day, before music could be recorded, selling music sheets with lyrics *was* the music business. When the phonograph started to take off, I think it was John Phillip Soussa who made the chilling prediction that one day the product "music" would not be sold to amateurs who performed it themselves, but to simple consumers who merely listened to the music.
(start)flounder
Grasp desperately for any revenue stream available
Terminally annoy target market
Stifle growth
(end)flounder
(start)death knell
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Who would pay, anyways? Paying a few bucks for lyrics still won't give you the right to do anything, such as perform the music in public. I think most of the lyrics use is very casual - just looking up a song to buy (OK, buy or pirate), or for amateur musicians to learn the song. But these people aren't going to pay any significant amount for lyrics. So where's the payoff?
Well, they found a better solution against unlicensed copies in your brain. Just remove the brain by brain surgery.
They already tested the method with their executives, and they found no negative side effects.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I haven't bought a "main-label" CD in 3 or 4 years. You don't need the major music labels people, support your local music scene and buy from private music shops.
Oh, and if I can't understand the lyrics to a song, I change the radio station.
- For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
Well, I guess this too shall pass... oh hell, that's the title to one of the late George Harrison's albums, I'm fuxx0r3d!
-steve
[n/t]
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Who else here has, in past, heard a song on the radio or elswhere and entered some of the lyrics into to Google to find out what it was? The RIAA is really shooting themselves in the foot here. How can you buy a song you heard if you don't know the name/artist? Lyrics sites are invaluable for that. The RAII should be glad they're out there.
I do this all the time, and I disover new music that way. I certainly wouldn't pay to do it though - after all, I'm just deciding whether I like something enough to explore further. It's like this - hear it on the radio, search on Google, read lyrics of a few songs to get a feel for the band, maybe download a song or two (or listen to clips on Amazon), and if I'm still interested, buy something.
If I really enjoy music, a large part of that is because I like the lyrics. But I doubt I'd pay someone else to try out their product. You know, in some businesses, they pay YOU to try out the product.
As a musician, I put my lyrics up on my site for free so people can spend more time and thought on my songs, and perhaps be drawn to my site through search. Seems kinda obvious that this is a good thing for everyone.
The only plus I see to the Gracenote system is that "official" lyrics should be accurate. Personally I'd like to get them packaged with a download, so that if I'm listening to a song I can click and get the lyrics to come up with a bouncing ball on where I am in the song. Seems like that would be easy to program and add next to nothing to file size.
In one shot.
What the fucking hellhole of a crap is this ?
This galaxy was not created to 'accommodate music industry personas and enrichment and well being of them above all others' ?
To hell with them. Just for these bastards' sake, i am going to go get lyrics from places 'illegal', despite i have no business with lyrics and do not care for them.
Motherfucking load of crap. You u.s. people, are just a crowd to be herded it seems. These rich son of a bitches do WHATEVER they want with you, and through your congress and senate.
Read radical news here
Which brings back memory of another post I recently made...
Mafia still breaks kneecaps.
Who is surprised?
Just wait until they try to stop people humming songs on the bus, they may even start a pay for thought service where money is deducted from you bank every time you get an song stuck in you head. It all looks like copyright infringement to me.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Gibson, Fender, Ibanez, Korg, Roland, Yamaha and all the rest of the music instrument makers should start suing all the artists and record companies for royalties since it was their instruments used to record all those songs in the first place. Harley Davidson trademarked their "sound" of their motorcycle engine, so all the music instrument makers should trademark all the sounds that can be created with their instruments and demand royalties too.
And this is part of why every restaurant I go to has their own special "Happy Birthday" rendition.
If you want a grand example of why it's good for things to eventually become part of the public domain, then that has to be the prime one.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
This is actually more or less old news and has been going before the music industry began the witch hunt for music pirates. There used to be a few really good lyric sites in the early days of the net and I believe they were sued (and shut down if I remember correctly) by Fox Media. On that note, I still find this ridiculous. Much more ridiculous than suing people that download a couple of mp3s on Kazaa. At least when the music industry says that someone that downloads mp3s is costing them money it's at a semi-legitimate claim (though I personally use downloaded mp3s to pick out what CDs are worth buying, then delete what I don't like). To go after someone for putting the words to a song on their website and giving the artist credit for their work is just stupid and greedy. No, I don't want to buy your lyrics also. I bought the right to know the lyrics when I bought the CD.
That would be like, 50,000+ violations per page.
Don't say I didn't warn you when they knock on your door.
in print, is because they are generally un-intellegable on the recordings. What shyte.
Are we still allowed to mention the name of singers/bands and their songs still???
I still remeber a little while back there was some issues over people posting guitar TABS.
I believe that postings of lyrics (and TABS) increase music sales. In a way, they act like ads. You want to know what the lyrics are, and you want to know how to play them on a musical instrument. Once you find the lyrics and/or tabs you are more likely to cough up a $1 on iTunes to get the song.
I just want to know something... *WHO* is going to pay for lyrics? Cover bands? right.
Extortion, they don't care how the lyric sites come up with the money, they're going to be ordered to pay or face a lawsuit.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
For shame! Suggesting that record company executives are greedy just because they want to license the lyrics to songs? They're just trying to make an honest buck. After all, they've got wives and children and mistresses and butlers and horses and maids and gardeners to feed just like everyone else.
Revenues won't increase if they manage to pull this off... There is a finite amount of money people are able to afford to spend on entertainment over any given period of time. The only way they get an increase out of this is if people decide some other entertainment purchase is less worthy than buying lyrics access, and change their buying habits. I think the only likely candidate for the corresponding sales drop is CDs. If people have to buy the lyrics they want, they'll either not buy them, buy less CDs so they can afford it, or pirate the music to afford it.
Poor Cobain's going to fall into oblivion. I need to check the lyrics to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" daily just to make sure he's actually singing in English.
What if I reverse engineer the lyrics of my favorite songs and post them on a site for all?
Don't Tread on Me
I can't say what I want to even if I'm not serious.
I can't say what I want to even if I'm just kidding.
The big mistake you are making here is believing the media companies in thier false assertion (enforced with technology) that music or movies are different in different places in the world.
Just because there may be no law about exporting - which allofmp3.com asserts they are within the law - does not mean that it is illegal or unethical. The US has no law against the import of music, Russia has no law against export, so the transit is within the law.
The issue with allofp3.com is not the same as torrents, it is a bigger issue: how do we have soveriegn nations with diffefent laws coexist on the web without balkanizing the internet? Philosophers predictied teh end of hte nation-state with the advent of the internet, and what we are seeing is either that or the demise of our happy, open, universal internet
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah
There; I guess its ok, because its satire.
Ratboy
And now for something completely different: the Public Domain! Dum dum dum duuuum, Dum dum dum Duuuum.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Good grief. The RIAA goes to all the trouble and expense to provide us with the highest grade litiginous doublethought, paving the way for their ownership of our very memories themselves, and you apply LOGIC? You should be whipped as an ungreatful clod, I tell ya!
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
At the rate technology is growing, it shouldn't be too long before we can upload our music preferences (based on location, time of day, mood, time of year, etc) into an AI DJ that spontaneously creates new music that, regardless of quality, is capable of competing with the status quo. Maybe even generate lyrics on-the-fly too, with semantically gauranteed meaning (or lack thereof).
This will, of course, work out perfectly as we begin the inevitable migration off this ball of dirt. No contact with a colony with it's own rock stars, music industry, and business parasites? AI DJ covers two out of three and LET'S YOU KEEP THE LYRICS FOR FREE!
Honestly, if the music industry had the first clue, they would have taken those MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN ANNUAL REVENUE and invested it in... well, exactly the same type of sites, I'd be able to find (and BUY) the song that I can't remember the name of that I heard at the club.
If they want my friggin money that bad, have Apple just make their database searchable by lyrics.
I don't want to own a copy of the lyrics. I don't want to redistribute the lyrics. I don't want to defecate on the lyrics and roll around on them.
I just want to find the song I want and ACQUIRE IT.
All but THROWING at them the money that they keep trying to steal from me. HERE IT IS!
So, stop trying to make me pay you for the privilege of paying you, and let me listen to my damned music!
Reality is prettier inside my head...
I doubt they can charge a lot and see it get used a lot. Frankly, an ad driven site that actually provides accurate content without all the malware would be great and might do well for them and for the songwriters (yes these folks will potentially get money, especially the more recent ones since agreements have gotten better for them). Tying it into Gracenote's services would be fine for most consumers, but not me (I'm a FreeDB kinda guy). Trying to charge a monthly fee for this would probably fail and per use micro payments doesn't seem like a winner either.
Who will pay? Probably the same people who pay for ringtones.
"I don't need drugs to enjoy this, just to enhance it" - Otto
So where is Gracenote going to get this big old database of lyrics? Are they going to use a web-crawler like other databases use to poach the lyrics off the 'net? Are they going to hire 10,000 people in India to listen to every song ever recorded and try to figure out what's being said? I highly doubt that record companies have got databases they'll sell.
Congratulations! You have successfully purchased and installed your club components. Welcome to the Club! While in the club you are welcome to listen to, sing along with and dance to any music that you have purchased a valid license for. Please remember to not allow those around you to listen to, sing along with or dance to any of your licensed music as they may not have a valid purchase for the same media. Upon exiting the club all components and licenses will be revoked. Please enjoy your stay.
In Soviet Russia these Soviet Russia jokes aren't considered the least bit amusing...
There's more that they can milk; the artwork on the cover of the CDs can be licensed, as well as works made in the spirit of those covers (if you're in Spain, that is); subsets of the lyrics that are too central to the song to be 'fair use' (I'm thinking for example of 'yeah yeah yeah, nanananananah' by Wham, which could lead to extorting^Wextracting money from people with ordinary websites that use the words 'yeah' or 'nah' or both.) Then there's the whole copyrightable stuff that the record industry have produced themselves; the form-factor of CD-cases that returns in jewelry-cases or books. The 'Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics' logo that goes so well on T-shirts and stuff - I doubt that they're currently cashing in on that.
They could make a business method or a patent out of 'printing copyright notices, authorship mentionings and cautions in a round manner around the edge of a round disc'. They could sue the DVD consortium for taking their medium's form-factor. They could sue the sky for being blue as the sky on the cover of 'Wish you were here', or they could extract royalties from women for having vaginas as one seems to do on the cover of that Whitesnake (?) album. They're not out of options just yet. Or they could start producing good music, but that seems to be far astray from their current business model these days. You know, companies evolve..
Posted this without regard for the thread; couldn't post this morning because of database maintenance, so there !
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Y3st3rd4y
4ll my troubl3s s33m3d so f4r 4w4y
Now it loo| Oh, I b3li3v3 in y3st3rd4y
Sudd3nly
I'm not h4lf th3 m4n I us3d 2 b3
Th3r3's 4 sh4dow h4nging ov3r m3
Oh, y3st3rd4y c4m3 sudd3nly
Why sh3 h4d 2 go I don't know
sh3 wouldn't s4y.
I s4id som3thing wrong
now I long for y3st3rd4y
Y3st3rd4y
lov3 w4s such 4n 34sy g4m3 2 pl4y
Now I n33d 4 pl4c3 2 hid3 4w4y
Oh, I b3li3v3 in y3st3rd4y
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
"Could you go without purchasing or even downloading music for 3 months? 6 months? a year? to prove a point?"
Geez, I hope so.
If you can't find enough music to listen to here or here or here or here or here or here then I pity you. But try here or here before giving up entirely.My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
There isn't any payoff, that's the whole stupid thing about this. Charging for lyrics? Come on. This isn't something the artists are pushing for, they want their songs played (music and lyrics). There aren't many artists out there writing meaningful poetry that you'd even CONSIDER paying for it. This is clearly an excessive use of copyright as a means of revenue; something it was NEVER intended to do. I think the next dumbass thing the MPAA will try is to charge bands to cover songs at any live performance. You want to see the music biz come to grinding halt, that will certainly do it. No one will want to create music if they can't learn from what came before. 99.999999% of all musicians started off listening to their favorite bands and then trying to play their songs, LONG before they ever wrote a song of their own. Now the record companies want to nickel and dime people to death and completely kill their power base. Good for them. They can be the cause of their own overly late demise.
I tried to post this last night, but alas the system was down for maintenance.
The music industry also announced their next move was to create a pay to play initiative targetting mp3 players. For too long have people been able to conveniently play our music over and over again. This type of longetivity in the digital format does not allow for breakage of the media from over-use. "We want popular songs to of course generate more income through requiring people to purchase new CDs, Cassettes, 8 tracks or vinyl" said one executive. To that end they've begun lobbying Apple and several other MP3 player vendors to include a counting system that will transmit a record of all songs played and the amount wireless to a network they intend to set up. They say users will get a bill once a month requiring them to pay for the amount of music they listened to. Customers who's accounts are not kept up to date will find their Ipods and other musical devices will cease to function. They've also announced a partnership with a man known only as Borris to help with collection.
and potentially the font used to show the lyrics in the subtitles
This is a nitpick, but just FYI... you can copyright the file used to describe how the letters are drawn, but you can't copyright the look of the letters. Yeah, it doesn't make much sense from a protecting-artistic-work point of view, and people grumble about it often. (source)
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
If I'm a good example of the casual user of lyrics, this will only cost them money.
A vast majority of the time when I'm looking for lyrics it's because I have just heard (or remember) a fragment of a song and want to know who wrote/performed it so I can buy it.
I sure as hell am not going to pay to search a database of lyrics just so I can then turn around to buy it. Why bother?
They're just going to lose sales from people like me.
I doubt it would end up being a paid-site situation (from the consumer's end), but it will end up being a small-to-decent stream of revenue for the publishers as website-owners buy it, and a small-to-decent stream of revenue from exclusive access leading to advertising ability.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
I'm the same way. Radio stations often don't say the artists name at all these days, or say the names of 5 artists before a block of songs, and I have no idea what I'm listening to. I don't follow new music anymore, since I think most of it is terrible. If I do happen to like a song the only way I'm usually able to figure out who the artist is is by looking up a snippet of the lyrics on the web. If that ability it taken away, I may never buy a CD again.
I use Google to search for songs that I don't know all the time. The unauthorized lyrics sites are a tremendous resource for this. I have purchased many CDs from artists I wouldn't have known otherwise. Somehow, I doubt that a evil-corp like Gracenote will offer a broad enough range of lyrics to make it worthwhile. You can pretty much guarantee that non-ASCAP or BMI songs will not be in their database.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
"Clearly, singing a song out loud should require induce a fee."
Hate to break it to you, but it already does.
In a lot of places, cover bands have to pay license fees. The fact that you're getting away with singing in the shower is probably just 'cause they dont have microphones and inspectors there.
Expect that to be rectified in the near future.
We all have a recording device capable of recording the lyrics of any song we choose. Some us are even capable of recording these lyrics and hear the singer's voice too. And some of us can even record and playback the full musical performance at will, whenever we desire to hear it.
This device is our brain.
Where will this "copyright" madness stop? Would they try and prevent us from even MEMORIZING lyrics and songs if they could?
Regarding "revenue" what they seem to be completely ignorant about is that whenever someone has a free lunch, they rarely ever convert into a paying customer. Lyrics websites would likely just close down, not pay up.
Um, they already do. Any bar you see that has a band pays money to allow music to be performed. Any festival or outdoor venue does too.
From WSU's page (which says the same as other pages, just in an understandable format):
I expected when I saw the story summary, and especially the misleading term "music industry" in the headline, that there would be a lot of comments in the thread criticizing the record labels for being so greedy. This is a result of a common and fundamental misconception about copyright and the music industry.
Record companies typically do not hold the copyright on lyrics to songs. There are two distinct forms of copyright involved here:
1) Mechanical copyright "(C)" is the right to produce and distribute copies of the sheet music, lyrics, etc. of a song. This form of copyright is often held by the artists themselves, and enforcement is often delegated to a collective agency such as ASCAP or BMI.
2) Phonorecording copyright "(P)" is the one usually signed over the the record label, giving them the rights to produce and distribute audio recordings of specific performances of songs.
Reprinting song lyrics without permission doesn't hurt the label. Who it DOES hurt are the artists. The right to be compensated for lyric publication is one of the few ways a songwriter can make money off their work without the RIAA taking a bite.
So if I use the words "minimum wage" on my web site, will the RIAA require me to pay royalties for the They Might Be Giants song with the same lyrics? Where does this bullshit stop?
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Although my legal knowledge is limited, I seem to remember a case from my college years that it was found to be "fair use" for a student to transcribe and publish a teacher's lecture (spoken words) for the web, but it was illegal to copy-paste any printed notes he had provided. (He was quite miffed at this revelation, if I remember.)
In related news: The Musick Industry finds that since their products have been used for thousands of years, they believe The Circle is going unlicensed. The Musick Industry believes that in the distributing of music used over the years, one can always find The Circle and so it is going unlicensed and may start charging extra for its use. The Musick Industries Circle can be traced back to its use in singing around a campfire, the Victrola, reel-to-reel, albums, cassette tapes, compact discs, and on the circuit board of flash-based music players. Therefore, any use of The Circle associated with music is the property of the Musick Industry and unauthorized use is prohibited. Any persons found shaping their lips to the form of The Circle while singing a song will be held libel and could be prosecuted.
;)
In and interesting turn, the Musick Industry has recently invested billions in prison systems operations around the world in anticipation of the imprisoning of all persons worldwide as it starts protecting its property, The Circle.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
IANAL.
Are spoken words copyright-able? In other words, if I listen to a song and transcribe the lyrics, is that copyright infringement?
In the U.S., copyright is extended once the work is "fixed in a tangible form." For lyrics, that means once the lyricist and/or composer touch pen to paper. Once you have copyright, you can't read or sing the idea from that paper, because that would be a "public performance" of the song. You wouldn't be able to transcribe the lyrics because that would be a copy of the original. It doesn't matter whether the copy is made by a Xerox of the original or a transcription from a licensed performance.
If true, newspapers have been infringing constantly with all of their so called "quoting" of sources.
Newspapers (and indeed, anybody who makes a copy of a short quote) are protected by fair use.
I seem to remember a case from my college years that it was found to be "fair use" for a student to transcribe and publish a teacher's lecture (spoken words) for the web, but it was illegal to copy-paste any printed notes he had provided.
Sounds about right. Of course, if the teacher had been reading from a script, that might be protected as well.
1. Sell CD with lyrics no one can understand.
2. Sell lyrics so people can tell what their songs are saying.
3. PROFIT!
Dustin - A different story...
Not only that, but you can display the lyrics with timing -- they are hilighted as they are sung. They can also be sent to MilkDrop as they are sung. About 45,000 "karaoke" files have been created. Creating one is as simple as listening to the song once, and hilighting the lyrics yourself using the down-arrow key. Then they are uploaded and anyone else listening to that song can benefit.
I donated $50 to the author of the program, and more development is really needed. Development has been slow this past year.
His program does not actually store any lyrics; it just searches 50+ search engines for the lyrics, and frequently gets them right in 1 or 2 tries.
No single program has ever enhanced my music-listening experience more. Having a hard time understanding lyrics, I am suddenly finding the true meanings of many songs I have been listening to for 15 years or more. It is like a musical re-awakening...Suddenly being able to know every word of every The Misfits song is really sweet.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
F*ck you.
Up yours.
Get laid.
Eat sh*t.
Drop dead.
Jack me off.
Suck this.
I don't need lyrics that badly.
I'm not that hard up for reading material.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
How many times have you typed a snippet of lyrics into Google hoping to find the name of a song so you can either buy the track or check out what other material they offer? I've done it plenty of times and once I find the name of the song and the band I head over to iTunes and buy the song and sometimes the whole album, if it's good enough. Without lyrics sites or pay only lyrics I honestly don't know how you'd find the name of a song that easily.
Another example of the RIAA or whatever entity acting penny wise and pound foolish.
Uh, I think you'll find it's much, much older than that. Even the Egyptians had tunes. It was using a different scale than we use, but they had tunes.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
I woke up one morning..
Oh crap! Now who do I owe? Where do I pay?
There is a lot of misinformation in this thread. So, as a published songwriter, let me set some things straight...
There are three elements of a song that can be copyrighted: The melody, the lyrics, and the recording. The record label generally owns the master recording, and the songwriter(s) own the lyrics and melody, which are managed by the publisher (i.e. Harry Fox).
Note that in this scenario, an artist who does not write their own songs, and signs a typical record deal, will end up with absolutely zero copyright control on their album.Song titles, chord progressions, arrangements, guitar tabs, etc., are NOT COPYRIGHTABLE.
But lyrics, recordings and melodies are definitely not in a grey area. You do not need the publisher's permission to record or perform a "cover" of another artist's published songs, but you are required to properly attribute the publishing rights, so that the owners can collect "concrete royalties" through your album sales and public performances.
Lyrics sites won't be going away any time soon. They've been trying to crack down on lyrics sites for years, and there are more of them than ever. Why does anyone think this will change, just because they saw a press release saying the record companies will be going after pirates? With so many sites, it will be impractical to try and shut them all down.
I agree with what someone here said about lyrics and cover art being integral to the music, which is why you get them when you buy an album. You should get them when you buy digital music too, and I think that's just what's going to happen. I don't think music retailers are going to raise the price of music for this. I think they're going to use it to make online music more attractive. You can't charge a significant amount more for lyrics, especially when they are so easy to find. Legal sales of lyrics mean consumer software and electronics can now carry lyrics. Everyone should be jumping for joy, not bitching. I for one am looking forward to having lyrics displayed on my iPod some day (soon?). Until now, no company making a legitimate consumer product would/could include lyrics; now they can.
The thing that makes lyrics and art so complicated is that there is no central place to license the rights. The music, art and lyrics are all potentially owned by different parties, and often are. Obtaining the rights to them can be near impossible, which is why you don't really see covers being sold with digital music. And when you do see covers, they are generally low-res. You can't have a low-res lyric, so it's a different problem that is difficult to solve. It will be interesting to see how they are packaged.
Regardless, I don't think this signals the death of lyrics search. The articles I've ready say that search is part of what's been licensed. So you'll still be able to search for lyrics, and presumably view them (else what good is search capability?).
no text
I didn't see anyone ask this question. Usually the songwriter is the copyright holder of the lyrics. Unless contracts have changed, I don't see how publishers can even offer an artist's lyrics without an agreement with the writer. They may own a percentage of it, but ultimately a much, much, much larger portion of this should be going to the artists or writers than to the labels or promoters. I personally think this is more hype than genuine business opportunity.
"Perhaps most amazingly, votaries of 'diversity' insist on absolute conformity." -- Tony Snow
Now you can make criminals out of deaf people as well! Anybody else you can target?
The problem that the publishers are having with this isn't the fact the their lyrics are all over the place. The problem they have is that people are making money off their lyrics through ad revenue, when they have no legal right to profit or exploit those lyrics unless the publisher gives them that right.
This isn't biz v. consumer, this is biz v. biz.
Libertas in infinitum
Actually the lyrics and composition are one in the same copyright. The composition/lyrics and the recording are two different things however.
Libertas in infinitum
If I hear a song I like I remember a few lines of the lyrics and then search for that on the web.
I am then able to find the artist and track title and go buy it.
Also I quite often post on music forums and in telling people about a cool song I like will post the lyrics for people to read, what is soo wrong with telling people the lyrics to a song?
The RIAA are a bunch of self defeating greedy fools who are ruining their revenue stream with every new action they take!
I use lyrics to get timing down with guitar tab.
Oh, they're taking that, too?
It puts the lotion on it's skin, or else it gets the hose again.