| Wednesday, April 25, 2007 |
11:22 - Music to my eyes
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/04/24/gracenotes-and-itunes-in-lyrics-talks/
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What's this? Label-sanctioned lyrics will soon be coming to iTunes?
If I'm reading this right, Gracenote/CDDB will be providing lyrics (submitted by the labels) to your iTunes at the same time that it sends you the track information for a CD you want to import. (I presume the lyrics will also be embedded in tracks purchased from the iTunes Store.) Interestingly, track info from Gracenote apparently remains an open and collaborative effort, depending on distributed users submitting their track info (and with newer, more accurate info superseding the first submissions hastily uploaded by the first buyers of a brand-new album); but the lyrics, which are protected by copyright in a way that the track info isn't, has to be label-approved and label-provided. So Gracenote isn't going "corporate", per se—but at least users will presumably be able to depend on the lyrics being authoritative and correct, because they're straight from the horse's mouth.
... Or, then again, maybe this will turn into another exercise in frustration, if the labels provide shoddy and typo-filled lyric files, and there's no wiki-esque collaborative mechanism for fans to correct them.
Either way, I'm guessing it'll be some time before we have true karaoke-style real-time lyric display in iTunes or on our iPods, which would have to involve an upgrade to the AAC format to allow the raw text of the lyrics field to be timecoded to the audio stream. But once the lyrics are there at all, then suddenly everyone will start seeing what potential for feature creep there is, and the pressure will build. Hurrah!
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Brian Tiemann
