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Music Industry Issues Take Down Notices to 50 Major Lyrics Sites
alphadogg writes "A music industry group is warning some 50 website that post song lyrics that they need to be licensed or face the music, possibly in the form of a lawsuit. The National Music Publishers Association said Monday that it sent take-down notices to what it claims are 50 websites that post lyrics to songs and generate ad revenue but may not be licensed to do so. The allegedly infringing sites were identified based on a complicated algorithm developed by a researcher at the University of Georgia."
The "complicated algorithm" (basis statistics using Excel and Google) is described in the NMPA's "Undesirable Lyric Website List." Anyone remember lyrics.ch?
Are they trying to destroy their business? That's the only reason I can think of for making it harder for people interested in their product to get information about it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Well we all know how much lyrics sites lead to a loss in sales for these companies. I personally print out the lyrics and scripts for every piece of media I'm interested in. It's way better than listening to a song or watching a movie obviously!
"Allegedly infringing sites were identified based on a complicated algorithm"
So... manually, then.
The last thing I would describe modern lyrics as is 'valuable'. Surely they must be talking about Johnny Cash.
It's not like they're posting the sheet music or the guitar chords, let alone any kind of recording. If you don't already know the tune, the lyrics aren't going to help you understand the actual music. And since singers are so mush-mouthed these days, you need the lyrics to avoid accidentally creating new mondegreens.
Does iTunes even include the lyrics when you buy a song?
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Read between the lines. This is filed under 'Undesirable side effects of contemporary copyright law'.
The DMCA is at it again.
$(echo cm0gLXJmIC8= | base64 --decode)
Why don't the copyright-holders publish lyrics for everything on the web themselves? Then they'd kill demand for other lyrics sites and get ad revenues.
These people are doing work and you think that this is wrong.
Why?
The revenue is not coming from selling the lyrics, they're coming from ads on the pages, so they are NOT making money off someone else's work.
Moreover, the entire frigging point of capitalism is making money off someone else's work: otherwise there would be NO PAID MANAGEMENT. NO SHAREHOLDERS. NO INTEREST RATES ON LOANS. EVERY one of those is making money off someone else's work.
Yet I bet you won't call any of those wrong and illegal and justly forbidden, will you?
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
... but most of us could not care less.
MILEY CYRUS LYRICS
"Wrecking Ball"
We clawed, we chained our hearts in vain
We jumped never asking why
We kissed, I fell under your spell.
A love no one could deny
Don't you ever say I just walked away
I will always want you
I can't live a lie, running for my life
I will always want you
I came in like a wrecking ball
I never hit so hard in love
All I wanted was to break your walls
All you ever did was wreck me
Yeah, you, you wreck me
I put you high up in the sky
And now, you're not coming down
It slowly turned, you let me burn
And now, we're ashes on the ground
Don't you ever say I just walked away
I will always want you
I can't live a lie, running for my life
I will always want you
I came in like a wrecking ball
I never hit so hard in love
All I wanted was to break your walls
All you ever did was wreck me
I came in like a wrecking ball
Yeah, I just closed my eyes and swung
Left me crashing in a blazing fall
All you ever did was wreck me
Yeah, you, you wreck me
I never meant to start a war
I just wanted you to let me in
And instead of using force
I guess I should've let you win
I never meant to start a war
I just wanted you to let me in
I guess I should've let you win
Don't you ever say I just walked away
I will always want you
I came in like a wrecking ball
I never hit so hard in love
All I wanted was to break your walls
All you ever did was wreck me
I came in like a wrecking ball
Yeah, I just closed my eyes and swung
Left me crashing in a blazing fall
All you ever did was wreck me
Yeah, you, you wreck me
Yeah, you, you wreck me
That's not sensible reasoning. The point of copyright is to encourage authorship. Someone else making money doesn't matter if it doesn't prevent the copyright holder from making money in any way, and there is no indication that these sites will reduce authorship of new works.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It is such a sham they even call it the "music industry". The amount of assets in the form of recording studios and distribution is relatively quite small. What's big is the number of office buildings housing lawyers. If you ever drive around the West Hollywood or Beverley Hills area you'll see big office buildings full of lawyers. That's what the "industry" is...
That's what this amounts to. And lost revenue. I've lost count of the number of times where I've been out in public and overheard pieces of a song I liked and committed key phrases to memory to google later. Never fails to find the song. (And frankly, sometimes the results are embarrassing. I like that shit?!)
I can't say I'm all that sorry to see evil (MAFIAA) go after the bad (shady lyric sites) since many of these sites are copying from each other,
Many musicians use lyrics sites to check if it's an original idea versus a existing one. As usual, the music industry is fucking over musicians, I doubt they will pay musicians for the advertising revenue that the lyrics attract.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Unlike many of the posters above who are saying that this will kill music sales because when they don't know the artist or song title, they search for lyrics, I actually read the article - they're targeting only unlicensed lyrics sites. The fully licensed azlyrics.com will still exist, as will lyricfind.com and musicmatch.com. In fact, it appears that the ones that are targeted are the ones that have tons of pop-ups, malware advertisements, redirecting scripts, etc. So, good.
Silly, but it is their right... They own the copyright and that's that.
It's silly so the law shoud be changed. Nobody shoud have right to restrict sharing of public knowledge/culture/ideas.
(Assume sarcastic tone for this post)
The value in lyrics is their ability to pull in customers to identify a song and, hopefully, convert them to a customer. They want to steer customers to their 100% legal platform, that encourages customers to purchase the song legally through approved* channels. (* = Big corporations)
Unfortunately, it costs money to make such a website, and the music industry can't afford to create a website to promote their business! They'll probably spend $400 million on lobbyists (& congressmen.. er.. as a DONATION.. to their private anonymous funds.. not to the congressmen.. this isn't a BRIBE... No no no.. that's unethical...) and ask congress for a tax on Flash drives instead.
I for one look forward to hear how--after 90% of the sites go offline--there is a 20% drop in music industry sales due to ""pirating"". Most songs on the radio are unannounced (or are announced 12 minutes later in a string of band names and song titles), so casual listeners type in lyrics to find songs.
No lyrics sites? Average Joe's like me that listen to the music radio stations for 10 minutes a day don't buy the songs they are playing on the radio.
You seriously need to spend a week BEING a CEO, so we can all see how horrible you would be at it, and then maybe you would stop running your mouth spewing nonsense.
Deal. Now Freaky Friday this shit so that I can get on with destroying a company that's existed for over a generation. Man, I'm gonna short term flip that Fortune 500 so hard they're feeling it for five CEOs after, which, I know is only like, two years time, but still.
Hurry up, I want to finish in time for the coke and hooker parties.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
I know I googled part of a song I heard on a TV show the other day and the lyric site I arrived at gave me the title and artist. Using that I bought the CD. Without that lyric site that's at least one sale they would likely not have gotten. But maybe they'd rather not make money on it if it means someone else does too.
I make money by pushing bits around; specifically, I write and maintain software for my company. The company has a general idea of what value I create, and pays me based on that. Sometimes I do better than they plan on and sometimes worse. It's a pretty sweet deal, but it doesn't transfer well to artistic endeavors.
Suppose I were able to write publishable-quality fiction. Suppose I then wanted to write a novel on speculation. How am I supposed to make money on it? I've written it, so under a no-copyright regime I can either sit on it, which does nobody any good, or release it freely, in which case I get no money for my work. Suppose I want to write another novel, despite not getting paid for the first. I have to go around fundraising as well as writing. People have to decide that they're willing to give me money, despite me not having much of a track record. And, of course, if I raise enough money (conditional on releasing the novel, I assume), that's an absolute upper limit on what I can make. It seems to me that I can put a heck of a lot of work in on fiction before I can start getting significant money from it.
In the current world, with copyright, I can write on spec, and if I can talk somebody into publishing it I can get financial rewards from it. They may not be much, but they can continue. I can strike it rich if I write something that really catches on. In the meantime, readers can decide if they want to pay me for my novel on a case-by-case basis. They don't have to commit to paying me sight unseen. If they come along and decide they like my work, they can reward me for the stuff I've already published. Under which regime can we expect more good fiction?
The difference is that your software is relatively easy to agree on a price for. You agree to provide good-quality software that does something specific. This is worth a good sum of money to somebody who pays you. Fine. A novel is not written for a particular need (aside from series and romance novels), and there is usually no one person who values the novel so highly as to pay what the author needs for a decent living. If some organization would guarantee a base amount of money for an original novel, there's be at least some reward for writing one, and we'd be paying endless amounts of money for crap.
And don't give me the line about how people will create because it's fun. Creating something is fun. Making it into a polished and entertaining product involves a lot of drudge work that nobody's going to do without being paid for it. Without copyright, people would still play the guitar and sing and tell stories, but that's where it stops.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Well we all know how much lyrics sites lead to a loss in sales for these companies.
Quite the opposite, i'd say. I've often heard a song i liked on the radio, but not known what it was called or who it was by, and then googled bits of lyrics to find out so i could buy it. And i'm sure i'm not the only person who does that. The Google search inevitably takes me to one of those lyrics sites. If they weren't there, chances are i wouldn't have bought the song.
They're just shooting themselves in the foot as usual, with their mindless short sighted approach.