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Music Media

Songfile (lyrics.ch) Trails Off 220

Posted by timothy from the day-the-music-died dept.
dave256 writes: "I was recently wandering about looking for some lyrics and CD track listings, and going to my good old standby, lyrics.ch (and summarily suffering through the redirection to songfile), I noticed a notice:'On September 30, 2001, the International Lyrics Server website will be closed and all lyrics will be removed from the Songfile web site. Thank you for your support, and we appreciate your past patronage. Please direct any questions or inquiries regarding this change to lyrics@harryfox.com.' Who was this masked harryfox.com? Boy was I (not) surprised. I for one will miss the old beast." The lyrics.ch site has survived some tough times before, so perhaps this isn't really its end.
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Songfile (lyrics.ch) Trails Off More

Songfile (lyrics.ch) Trails Off

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  • Guess who owns the domain lyrics.ch? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I checked with whois, and the Harry Fox Agency owns the
    domain. They didn't take ownership of it recently because
    whois says that the record was last updated on 5/23/01. Maybe
    this is nothing new for everyone else, but I didn't realise
    it until now.
  • Before someone else asks this, can we have lyrics GPL'ed ?
  • lyrics.ch was a great tool. I'm a poet (of sorts) and a musical artist. Not giving my audience access to my material doesn't make sense. Artists produce art to be enjoyed by others and to get themselves off.

    By making the art harder to obtain keeps the audience from enjoying the art. It doesn't make sense. It's too ironic. It's not like the artist is going to be making much money selling song books and lyric books.

    I know of one artist group that publishes their lyrics via the web, www.beastieboys.com. Let us support and rejoice in the Beastie Boys.

    funk
    • Foo Fighters [foofighters.com], too. Lyrics and tabs. Of course, this wasn't these guys' first band;' they'd already learned how to deal with record companies and to first get a lawyer before signing a contract.

      woof.

      Wasn't "Learn to Fly" on that list of banned songs from some lame Net-radio group? Great tune, amusing video.

    • all that totally for free crap goes out the window when your living in a shitty apartment and your rent's overdue. And your only source of income is a band that probably won't make it big. That's when you realize, HEY i wanna entertain people but I wanna eat too.
      • If your band didnt 'make it big' maybe it's because they're making shit music that nobody wants to see live? People are STUPID if they think they can live off being in a band without HARD WORK! And even then, it's not guaranteed, just like life. Always have a backup skill..

        • Re:unless you need to make a living off music (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I have this theory. Metalhed isn't really in a working band. Working bands that aren't selling records don't worry about their lyrics being downloaded off the internet, or their mp3's being given away on Napster. They are worrying that no one will come to their next gig. Getting splattered all over Napster is a working band's dream. It means lots of people want your stuff.

          And, by the way, if you're not gigging at least four nights out of the week, your band is a hobby. You should have a fucking day job.

    • Lyrics.ch was a great resource before the HFA ruined it about three years ago.


      During it's heyday (late 1998, IIRC), it was my only site for music resources and lyrics. I'd download the mp3, and printout the lyrics for digesting at my leisure. If I really enjoyed hte music, I'd buy it. I find music infintely more enjoyable when I can understand what's being said and can interpret the music.


      Then, the Harry Fox Agency decided that lyrics.ch was making money off it's copyright, and that was bad, bad, bad. Never mind that lyrics.ch only made enough money to keep the site open, and never mind that the people downloading these lyrics were primarily doing so for their own fair use.


      The ideal thing to do, would have been to say "hey, this thing works, rather well in fact, and people like it." Make sure you're tracking the songs people look at, and charge lyrics.ch for the royalties -- if money became a big problem, make it a subscribtion site. But, no, HFA had to kill it outright. They were so worried that someone would print out their valuable lyrics (even if the royalty was paid) that they crippled the site entirely. First, they took it down for almost a year, which is an eternity in internet time, allowing many people to forget about it and many others to find alternate sources (like google). When it came up, you couldn't print the lyrics, and you couldn't copy and paste them to print them. Add to that, the lyrics scrolled at a rate inconsistent with the beat of the song and was uncontrollable. Utterly useless. So, people stopped coming around. Now, HFA says there isn't enough demand to keep it open. No shit dumbass, I wonder why.


      So, HFA could have done it right, gotten itself richer and enriched artists in the process. Instead it insisted on being draconian with it's IP and now artists as well as the HFA are suffering because people haven't stopped looking for lyrics, they just look for them in places other than lyrics.ch -- places where they can actually use the lyrics they download.

  • Just type "band name" "song name".

    Somebody always has it.

  • Not a huge loss - they were gone anyway. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WWWWolf ( 2428 ) <wwwwolf@iki.fi> on Sunday September 30, 2001 @09:08AM (#2370122) Homepage

    Basic order of the events was this:

    1. They had a nice lyrics website with every lyric for just about every somewhat well-known song.
    2. Someone in the Industry didn't like it.
    3. The Industry asked them to remove some songs.
    4. Site maintainers couldn't.
    5. After largish mess, the site reopened in a vastly less useful form - most of the lyrics (that weren't "copyright checked") were unavailable, and the remainder of the lyrics were displayed using Java applet that didn't allow printing or stuff. Lyrics themselves were encrypted.
    6. Since it couldn't really be used, it stopped being an useful resource...

    Some time later, they proposed doing the same thing to Napster. "Make them stop distributing our copyrighted works for free and make them use a format that no one will use when there's other (admittedly less 'easy' but at least non-crippled) alternatives available."

    However, unlike Napster, lyrics.ch was an "ethical" service, even when it bordered on the dark edge of the international copyright law.

    I really don't see what problem the song copyright holders have with distributing lyrics and guitar tabs - Especially when they're not selling that information themselves. (I would be really happy if all CDs would come with lyrics... or, alternatively, the musicians would learn to pronounce the words clearly enough so we dumb foreigners could make any sense of them =)

    • Re:Not a huge loss - they were gone anyway. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Sunday September 30, 2001 @10:55AM (#2370267) Homepage Journal
      (I would be really happy if all CDs would come with lyrics... or, alternatively, the
      musicians would learn to pronounce the words clearly enough so we dumb foreigners could make any sense of them =)


      I'd just be happy if the dumb fsck radio dj's would tell you what songs they've played.


      East coast, Mid-west, West Coast, it's the same all over, damn few will tell you, which I really fail to understand, since the RIAA are so rabid about profits, but you can't by music you don't know whose or what it is! I've gone years not buying a CD because all I get is dumb looks when I try to describe it in music shops. "Well it goes, hmm hmm hmmmmm hmm hmmmm and lada dee dum dum doo doo doowop"
      After the lawyers, I've got a pretty good idea who should be next up against the wall when the revolution comes.

      • I'd just be happy if the dumb fsck radio dj's would tell you what songs they've played.

        Damn right. It once took one year for me to find out what what and whose that cool song they once played was... For all I care, I would have bought all the albums from that bad the next business day if they had bothered to tell the song name.

        Back when it was on the playlists more often, they never told the performer or the name, both of which would have been much appreciated since web searches weren't too fruitful... =)

        ..alas, I also wish they'd play older songs; I recently discovered one song I really liked when it was on radio When I Was A Little Kid, and had forgotten it already... =)

        (And now that I've started whining and ranting, I might also want to express my desire for the record shops to also sell older and more exotic music, not just the new records. Don't blame me for my love and frequent use of Freenet and WWW mp3z SiT3z; if the record stores would sell more computer/video game soundtrack CDs, I'd be more than happy to buy them. For some reason, ordering CDs from outside the country sounds awfully costly compared to simple websearch and couple of hours of downloading!)

      • A question for the audience: are DJ's around the world as bad are they are here (Wichita, KS)? Specifically, these morons seem to think we tune in to hear their lips flap - they talk over the intro to the song, right up to (and often past) the point where the lyrics start, and then start yapping at the end of the song.

        Is this just stupidity, vanity, or some vague and low-tech form of copy protection? Any DJ's out there that can answer?

        It is so bad here that I no longer listen to the radio for any length of time (just in the mornings, for about 2 songs, on my clock radio. That way, the annoyance factor of the DJ's helps me wake up). I listen entirely to my own music collection the rest of the time.

        These idiots seem to forget that if we aren't listening, we aren't pumping up their ad revenues. Of course, this also makes it hard to hear new music.

        • Re:Dj's around the world.... (Score:5, Informative)

          by einTier ( 33752 ) on Sunday September 30, 2001 @02:08PM (#2370752)
          I used to be a DJ, so I can answer this question. First, let me say that radio today is really a monopoly, or at least a racketeering system -- only about two or three very large companies own most of the big radio stations in the nation.


          When I started, I was instructed to talk over the beginning of the song. The reason for this was that most people don't recognise the beginning of the song (maybe because all the DJ's talk over it?) so listeners might change the station looking for something else, and you're not really wrecking the song, because you don't have two voices competing for attention (crosstalk is very hard to understand). It also kept us from playing background music while we talked (if you notice, almost no DJ just talks without something going on the background -- supposedly it makes the patter more interesting to the ADHD listeners). We all hated the background beats, which were universally lame, so we talked over the song instead. Keep in mind, it was considered really amazing if you could consistently "nail" your patter so it stopped just as the singer starting singing. The problem with is is, sometimes you slip and talk over the beginning of the song -- which was very, very bad. I really don't think that this was some lame form of copy protection, it was just trying to keep listeners.


          Which, of course, is the reason they don't tell you what song is playing. Perversely, you usually aren't allowed to "back announce" any songs on the radio. This is because you are supposed to focus on what you are going to be playing, not what you've already played. The logic is, if you talk about upcoming songs, people stick around to hear those songs, if you talk about the ones previously played, they go looking elsewhere because the song they wanted to hear was just played. You also aren't allowed to cut in in the middle of a block of music to announce songs, because people want to hear music, not you talking. On top of that, you're supposed to call attention to the lastest hit (called an 'A' or 'B' song), so you only announce it, and not the songs that follow. Using the logic above, only the first song gets announced, and you never know what's played after it. Of course, you can always call the DJ -- but they never answer the phone, because listeners who call in represent a very small minority and aren't important. As a DJ I was allowed to do whatever I wanted with callers, ignore them, abuse them, ask for nudie pictures, you name it.


          Perverse logic, I know, but that's the why of it.

          • I remember hearing that some radio stations had special countdown timers so the DJ would know when the singer starts singing.
            • I don't know about special countdown timers, because it's been about eight years since I was a DJ.


              However, most of our songs were listed in this format:
              0:12/3:45/0:45 [name of song] F

              This meant the song had 12 seconds of lead-in time before the singer started singing, 3 minutes and 45 seconds of actual runtime, and 45 seconds of trailing music where the artist didn't sing at all -- the leading and trailing music could be cut off entirely or talked over, your descretion. Also, sometimes there was a notation, like "start at :35", meaning that the first 35 seconds were stuff the radio station didn't want played, like the low sound effects and music at the beginning of Sarah McLachlan's Possession. The "F" just meant that the song faded out, if it ended cold (meaning it just stops, no fade, see "Hazy Shade of Winter"), it was labeled "C".

          • Thanks for the insight, that explains much. Of course, with folks like me the effect is quite the opposite of what is desired ( I change the station to get away from the DJ's patter).
            • I tune away, too, particularly if it sounds like the DJ is just launching into something that will go on for more than 10 seconds.


              I usually only listen to the radio while driving, and that's why I'll have a pile of tapes (no CD yet in my pickup) when I head off on a 800 mile drive for vacation.


              I've never liked DJ patter over music, it's like nails on a chalkboard. I've supposed it's because DJ's have a boring job and just want to say something before they go mad. Oh, hey, why don't I alphabetize the Elton John albums again...


              We have a local station, mostly pop, www.cd93.com, which does provide 3 hours of music listing, sometimes lyrics, but it's not much help if you're out driving. You can listen to the station over the web, too.

          • ...Also, when DJ's patter during the song, isn't that more commercial playtime instead of having them patter during looped beats?
            • Yes, that's true, but stations have no problem dropping songs to make sure all the commericals get played. I never heard a DJ get hammered for talking too much, unless it became rediculous -- like five or ten minutes without doing PSAs or announcements or voice commericals.


              In fact, in every hour's playlist (you didn't think the DJ picks the songs, did you? They are all picked by computer) there are always a few very old songs ('C' and 'D' songs) that if there's enough time, they'll be played -- if not, they get dropped.

          • Wow, that explains a lot.

            I miss the radio station in my hometown (WHMH). They made a point of not talking over the music & play any song on an album, not just the hits. They also regularly announced the songs before & after playing. On more than a few occasions, I called in to ask what the last song or song before was & they were happy to tell me. It's only 60 miles from where I live now, but I can't pick it up.

            Here in Minneapolis & St Paul, the biggest 3 radio stations are owned by ABC/Disney, and most of the rest by Clear Channel.

        • Well, I've been on and off a campus radio dj.

          Campus stations don't do this because we're trying to sell records and concert tickets. We play music that we really, really like: we think the artists should be supported.

          We also back-announce. Actually, I normally always back-announce. I hate to let people know what's coming. :)

          Commercial stations, on the other hand, are trying to keep listeners. Therefore, they ideally want nothing but Happy Sounds. Information is not a Happy Sound.

          I can't imagine living in a town without a campus station. Commercial radio sucks.

      • Actually, here in New Orleans we do have a station that tells you the song title and artists name. On 105.3 at the beginning of every song, you hear a little chime and then the artist and the title are announced. To be honest, I didn't much care for it when the first started doing it, but now I rather like it. Now, I really do have a better idea of which bands I should love and which I should hate. (Now I just hate the little chime sound effect and wish they would find something more original.)

      • The DJ's on the station I listen to actually say the song name and artist either before or after the track and then dont talk/cut out the song until it's faded away! I'm amazed at that. It means a few seconds less time of listening to themselves talk. Of course it's a station that students mainly listen to so they probably bitched which made the station adopt that practice.
      • Years ago, when I was living in Houston, I listened to the Rice Univ. radio station (call sign KTRU? can't remember) almost all the time. It had something like a 5 mile radius, but that didn't matter since I lived downtown. The DJs would play 10-15 songs in a row and then tell you what they were in reverse order. So if you heard a song you liked, but didn't know the name of, you had to remember the song that came after it and listen for it when they listed all the titles. I can remember sitting in my car for upwards of 20 minutes waiting for the DJ to come on and announce the name of a song I heard that I absolutely HAD to find out the name of.

      • Re:Song names (Score:2, Informative)

        by germanbirdman ( 159018 )
        I'd just be happy if the dumb fsck radio dj's would tell you what songs they've played.


        In Europe, we have a thing called RDS - Radio Data system - I don't know if you have it in the states. RDS carries a thing called RT (radio text).


        Virtually all radio stations support it. You press a button on the receiver and it tells you what song is playing, the weather, usually a url of the station.All new receivers basically support it as well.


        Another thing you can do is just write down the time and date and then check the playlist on the website or send the radio station an e-mail. I have done that several times before I had an RT-capable radio or am in the car where only RDS is supported (automatic frequency switching, radio station name display) but not radio text as to not distract the driver).

    • Re:Not a huge loss - they were gone anyway. (Score:4, Informative)

      by reynaert ( 264437 ) on Sunday September 30, 2001 @12:54PM (#2370555)

      Lyrics themselves were encrypted.

      The lyrics are not encrypted. They are stored in some kind of vector graphics format, much like Windows Metafiles.

      Try it: Select a song, and look at the HTML code. It will load two CAB files, one with the Java applet, the other with the lyrics. Each page is stored in a file with as extension '.rpf'. Strip out the non-ASCII characters and you're left with the lyrics.

      If you want to do it the "right" way, you can disassemble the Java code, find out the file format and write a proper reader. It's quite trivial.


    • I actually used it to find the band and title of songs after hearing an unidentified snippet on the radio. Thank god, since lyrics.ch has been shut down, now I can't identify any songs that I heard but wasn't told the title. This should boost cd sales.

  • ... seems harryfox.com is being slashdotted. May I suggest easing up a bit for a short period of time or trying a google cache [google.com]
  • There are quite a few places which have stopped keeping lyrics online... for eg: lovetest.com. Go go google, search for lyrics band name song title and lo... there you go..

    Shouldn't be much of a problem getting the lyrics. someone somewhere will have it, and if not, the google cache will surely have it.

    --
    Does google cache it's cache ?
  • Such a site is worth it's weight in gold. Or it's amount of bytes in dollars... or whatever.

    In any case, I had no idea about this place until now, when they are shutting it down.

    Typical. :)

  • ...is Giga's Dutch Lyrics archive.

    He had an archive of 18000 dutch lyrics. He ran this free archive for about five years and was forced to take it down by the Musicopy foundation.

    Good intentions are not always appriciated...
    http://www.giga.nl/walter/gnsa/ (dutch only)

  • Hasn't been decent for years (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jebediah21 ( 145272 ) on Sunday September 30, 2001 @09:21AM (#2370135) Homepage Journal
    In its original form, Lyrics.ch caused me to buy more music than I ever had before. Not even Napster gets me that motivated to go out and buy CD's (although the RIAA makes it very hard to get motivated about being overcharged, but I digress). It was very easy for me to search for a song from over 15 years ago and find out what it was. With that knowledge I would look for the best priced CD containing that song.

    After Lyrics.ch got raided it had no use. For a long time there were no lyrics up. When they did get lyrics back the site was rendered sterile. There were so few lyrics you had a better chance using Yahoo! or Altavista (no Google back then) to find the lyrics.

    When Songfile took over it was no better. Many lyrics are up, but I don't want to liscence a song just to know if it is the one I am thinking of.

    Is it just me, or does the RIAA make you feel like you're being shat upon? Almost any other industry would be enthused people used your service for such things.

    • Re:Hasn't been decent for years (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SCHecklerX ( 229973 ) <greg@gksnetworks.com> on Sunday September 30, 2001 @10:11AM (#2370197) Homepage
      In its original form, Lyrics.ch caused me to buy more music than I ever had before. Not even Napster gets me that motivated to go out and buy CD's (although the RIAA makes it very hard to get motivated about being overcharged, but I digress). It was very easy for me to search for a song from over 15 years ago and find out what it was. With that knowledge I would look for the best priced CD containing that song.


      And that is the point the idiots totally fail to see, (and sadly so do many of those posting here at slashdot).

      That's exactly what I used to use the lyrichs server for. I would hear some words to a song, not know what it was, then go look it up so I could purchase the CD.

      This was a unique search engine. There really was no other way to figure out a song's title and artist based on what you heard. What is wrong with HFA? Are they REALLY this stupid, thinking the main use of this site was so that people could somehow rip-off the artists? I'm sure any cover band who wants to play a song would buy the sheet music, with lyrics, if they needed to. But you can't do what lyrics.ch did if your only resource is to buy sheet music. You can't search lyrics on paper to figure out a songname, just like you can't go to a library and read EVERY BOOK just to figure out where a certain passage was quoted.
      • Unfortunately, there's a very small market for books on lyrics only, not music, not tab, but just words. Harryfox is employed by the record companies to protect that market. For some odd reason record companies think they can sell you a CD and then later sell you the lyrics in a $5 book.

  • Harry Fux... oops I mean Fox (Score:3, Informative)

    by Krimsen ( 26685 ) on Sunday September 30, 2001 @09:34AM (#2370148)
    Yeah good ol' Harry Fux pulled the same crap with The OnLine Guitar Archive [olga.net]. I haven't been there in a while, but looks like they're up and running succesfully. I checked their About Page [olga.net] and at the bottom it mentions they need funds to pursure a case about the legality of "by ear" transcriptions. I've donated in the past and I think I'll do it again now...

  • Sorry, Timothy. It's curtains for this site. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BadDoggie ( 145310 ) on Sunday September 30, 2001 @09:36AM (#2370153) Homepage Journal
    The original lyrics.ch was beaten out of existence years ago, thanks, in great part, to US legislation, written by and for you-know-who. See this page at IASPM [iaspm.net].

    It was killed because the big companies had already realised (pre-Napster) that in order to continue spewing the silliness they tried to allege in courts, they had to control every aspect of the music they published and take every case of "infringement" seriously. US law requires this to some extent, but Sony, Warner and Bertelsmann are willing to go that extra mile.

    The spread of lyrics for any song -- even from this week's latest gyrating girl or cool neat-o boy group -- enhances sales. However, in order to control the copyrights, the publishers will not even license rights to reproduce these lyrics. Instead, you must go to the band's official site (usually within the record company's domain), where you can not only see the lyrics (if you provide enough personal information), but you also have the "opportunity" to buy lots more merchandise. You are a "consumer".

    So forget something sensible, like the centralised, optimised and simplified lyrics.ch database. Give up on ideas that make life a little easier for "consumers" but might deny a copyright holder a possible extra $0.00013 from a banner impression.

    Of course, you can always search Google for "<band name> AND <song title> AND (lyrics OR text OR words)" and find the lyrics elsewhere. Works for finding guitar tabs, too. But the centralised database which was organised to provide you with the information you wanted -- how you wanted it -- instead of advertising and enticement to further purchase is history.

    I already mourned the loss of this site almost four years ago. What HFA did to it once they got control made it unusable. I haven't been there since.

    woof.

    If I had a penny for every Goth girl Web page with Cure lyrics, I'd have $89,317.74

    • True (Score:2, Informative)

      by krelian ( 525362 )
      There will never be a web site that carries "every lyric ever made".The best place to look for lyrics would have to be using google (in the above method)to look in fan sites.Fan sites are much more devoted to there artists,which means that you usually won't get misprinted lyrics or some songs lacking. You can find a fan site for almost every popular and no so popular artist that ever existed(If there were good enough that you would want to search for their lyrics)and one of the main features of this sites are is the lyrics section.Today when we have an excellent search engine like google,i don't think that we should mourn lyrics.ch too much.

  • Yeah yeah (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cantanker ( 18364 ) on Sunday September 30, 2001 @09:44AM (#2370160)
    So the corporations want to make money from you and you don't want them to.

    So stop buying their stuff.

    Stop buying CDs. Make your own music. See live music. Stop buying DVDs. Stop seeing blockbusters. Go to the theatre. Support your local independent filmmakers.

    That will hurt the big guns and support those who really need it. Who cares if you don't get to see or hear the latest stuff: it's mostly rubbish, you certainly won't suffer for the lack of it, and hell, you might even learn something new.
    • actually, what they did to lyrics.ch gets them less money. If you hear a song, and want to buy the CD, how do you figure out what the fucking song title is and which CD it is on without being able to somehow search on lyrics????

      Think before you post next time.
  • As the passing of Lyrics.ch brings a deepening sense of calm to the musical landscape,
    a single voice cries "Where're The Fscking Mirrors???"
    • It can't be mirrored. Harry Fox got his fangs into lyrics.ch a few years ago and forced them to serve the lyrics through a java applet that won't allow saving or cut-and-paste. That means no wget, and no cut-and-paste jobs. Your only hope is some sort of automated link-clicking script combined with a packet sniffer. It would probably be simpler (and legally safer) to just do a clean rewrite of the whole site in a country with less stringent copyright laws.

  • It's not the International Lyrics Server anyways. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Sunday September 30, 2001 @09:51AM (#2370174)
    > going to my good old standby, lyrics.ch (and summarily suffering through the redirection to songfile),

    Then you were never looking at the International Lyrics Server. You were looking at the thing that killed [harryfox.com] the International Lyrics Server.

    Did anybody ever mirror the original ILS before the enemy destroyed it? Does anybody have backup tapes/CD-Rs?

    Since the shutdown (and make no mistake, songfile.com was never useful as anything other than a way to find out that yes, Harry Fox owned the words, and wanted you to know they owned the words, and didn't want you to read them - or that they didn't own the words and therefore you couldn't read them) seems that bandwidth has gotten accessible enough that such a thing, if it exists, could be discreetly distributed via one of the many P2P applications, or posted to USENET via an open SOCKS proxy. Diskspace has also gotten cheap enough that individuals could host their own local copies of the pre-Foxsized ILS on their own hard drives.

    Not that I'd encourage anyone to do such a thing. But it'd be kinda nice to see if someone were to independently come up with the idea of doing it.

    • Not that I'd encourage anyone to do such a thing. But it'd be kinda nice to see if someone were to independently come up with the idea of doing it.

      Or even better, put them in some sort of de-centralized system (freenet? gnutella?) that isn't susceptable as someone like napster and the like.

      Sadly, I didn't mirror anything from the original server, though it got me a lot of the information I needed at the time...

  • Some email addresses at harry fox (Score:4, Informative)

    by SCHecklerX ( 229973 ) <greg@gksnetworks.com> on Sunday September 30, 2001 @09:58AM (#2370181) Homepage
    Since some folks are having problems getting to the site, here are some addresses:

    clientrelations@harryfox.com
    licensing@harryfox.com
    index@harryfox.com
    pr@nmpa.org

  • I guess the music industry doesn't like selling music to me. I often like to check out the lyrics of a band I'm interested in to see what they're all about, sadly, that is often more difficult today with them going after these type of sites, therefore, I buy less music.

    This is the same deal as (g)napster. I absolutely hate listening to the radio, so the Internet is the only way for me to listen to something before I buy it. The music industry is making this more difficult, therefore, I buy less music.

    When lyrics were more easily available and MP3s were more easy to get a hold of, I bought more music.

    It never ceases to amaze me how hostile this industry is to it's best customers...

    • I would guess that they are skeptical to this kind of statement since people said they would buy more albums because of napster but instead it has dropped with 20% or so.

      • Re:I guess (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jonathan_ingram ( 30440 ) on Sunday September 30, 2001 @11:13AM (#2370302) Homepage
        No, a large amount of people have *stopped* buying music since Napster fell apart, and music sharing splintered into 15 million rival protocols.

        The time when I bought most albums was when I had a nice broadband connection and Napster was in its heyday -- in conjunction with cdnow.com it let me listen to lots of artists which I'd not heard about before. Now I buy much less music, and from a narrower base of artists.

        The year that the music industry was declaring that file sharing would destroy music buying, revenues from CD sales went *up*.

  • What a good solution of using an applet to decrypt (Score:4, Informative)

    by chris_7d0h ( 216090 ) on Sunday September 30, 2001 @10:10AM (#2370195) Journal
    I encountered a similar stupid idea a while back.
    The site was a link resource site which used an applet to "decrypt" the links they had, in order to prevent link napping.
    The applet wanted to perform some things not supported by the applet sandbox IE prompted me to give the applet the required privileges.
    Since I'm not keen on running code from "John Doe" I wanted to see what it did and thus decompiled the applet. It took me about 15 minutes to CP (cut'n paste) the decoding code into a new app which created link pages in normal HTML without an applet.

    The same was true for this particular applet. With a few modifications, there is now a "Save lyrics" button on the applet :-)

    Without saying, using an applet as the means of decrypting content which one wants to protect is not a good idea at all.
    • Science is just a bunch of beliefs, as all religions are...

      They both contain beliefs, but religions are based on faith, while science is based on observation. Very big difference.
    • Yes, but for doing that, if you live in the states, they can throw you in prison for circumventing a copyright control device.

      Neat, huh?

    • Since I'm not keen on running code from "John Doe" I wanted to see what it did and thus decompiled the applet. It took me about 15 minutes to CP (cut'n paste) the decoding code into a new app which created link pages in normal HTML without an applet.

      Just for the record, you do realize that you're now a felon under the DMCA, right? Not to say anything about the ethics of the situation, but The Man could throw you in the stripey hole for years, should this come to their attention.


      Pretty absurd, huh? Write your congresscritters. Contribute to EFF. Fight to reverse the DMCA, before you end up fighting for reduced bail.

      • Just for the record, you do realize that you're now a felon under the DMCA, right?

        Just for the record, you're wrong.

        • How so? He described creating a circumvention device to overcome security protecting copyrighted intellectual property from unpermitted use. Creation of such circumvention devices is expressly illegalized by the DMCA. So on what basis are you claiming otherwise?
          • Describing such a device is not a felony. Even if that description could be considered trafficking (which I doubt it could), it was not done "willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain".
            • To be finicky about it, yes, his post was not a felony -- but that's not what I originally said in any case. He described the commission of a felony. That is, if he actually built a circumvention applet as he claimed, then in so doing he committed a felony. "Commercial advantage" is pretty broad, and can include something as simple as *enabling* the use of copyrighted material without permission, even if you personally do not make commercial use of that material. Just ask Dmitri Skylarov.

              • "Commercial advantage" is pretty broad, and can include something as simple as *enabling* the use of copyrighted material without permission, even if you personally do not make commercial use of that material. Just ask Dmitri Skylarov.

                I think you'd have a pretty tough time convincing a jury of that. I'm certainly not convinced. Another point to be made is that the DMCA is not enforcible as interstate commerce when there is no commerce taking place. The government would then have to rely on the copyright clause, and fair use would almost certainly kick in.

                What Sklyarov (!) allegedly did was not even remotely similar. He was allegedly engaging in international commerce for profit. That is a much different situation, from a constitutional standpoint, from a legal (DMCA) standpoint, and from a standpoint of juror sympathy.

  • Best lyrics server: Google (Score:5, Informative)

    by interiot ( 50685 ) on Sunday September 30, 2001 @10:18AM (#2370208) Homepage
    Seriously. Just search for {lyrics In A Gadda Da Vida}. It might take 15 seconds longer to find lyrics through Google. But there are so many personal lyrics pages right now that it's going to take the RIAA a while to put a sufficient dent in those sites.
  • Just another example of how our lives are being run by lawyers.
    But we are to blame the most for we elect to office these lawyers.

    Maybe someone out there could write a Napster like program except for searching for lyrics or a server like the CDDB. I know there has been talk of adding lyrics to the CDDB (Compact Disk database).

  • Songmeanings (Score:4, Informative)

    by mini me ( 132455 ) on Sunday September 30, 2001 @10:30AM (#2370226)
    That's a shame about songfile.

    I however have been using SongMeanings [songmeanings.net] as of late. For you Winamp users, there is also a plugin that will display the lyrics for your currently playing song.

    There are some songs that I would have thought would be on there that aren't, but you can always add your own if they are missing.

  • Same thing happened to OLGA (Score:5, Informative)

    by Skynet ( 37427 ) on Sunday September 30, 2001 @10:31AM (#2370229) Homepage
    The Online Guitar Archive, a collection of guitar tablature. Harry Fox is a representative of the record industry that believes sites such as these are violating the artist's copyright.

    I wrote a paper on this in college. Here are the pertinent parts.

    {snip)

    OLGA's Dilemma

    On June 9th, 1998, The Online Guitar Archive (OLGA) closed its doors. They closed because the Harry Fox Agency, a representative of music publishers, threatened litigation against OLGA on the basis that OLGA distributes copyrighted material unlawfully. According to Margaret Drum of the Harry Fox Agency: "Some sites have been closed down because they contain copyrighted material . . . the copyright owner can distribute their own [copyrighted material] - it can't be done by other people, and that's why it's considered an infringement" (Stutz). Drum has a valid point, and one that is relevant to a very important part her Agency's purpose: protecting the rights of music distributors. From such a specific (and biased) point of view as hers, the offering of a free alternative to something that many music distributors market is clearly a destructive thing. Drum and other associates at the Harry Fox Agency need to pick up a guitar and start trying to play one of their favorite songs. Commercially available guitar instructional material is mostly in the form of plain sheet music. Sheet music is extremely difficult to understand if you are a beginning musician. The inherent value to the guitar tablature OLGA offers is that it is easy to understand. And because it is easy to understand, even beginning guitarists can use it and learn how to play songs. Even for experienced guitarists, it makes the process of learning a new song easier and quicker. It is easy to see that by making the knowledge available to beginners and experienced users alike, OLGA is doing nothing to harm the music industry. It is helping it by allowing a greater number of people share in the pleasing feeling of learning and playing a song you heard on the radio. It could easily be construed that tablature is used to "teach" beginning guitarists how to play a song. Therefore, according to current copyright law the use of the material would be a "fair use."

    The case of the Online Guitar Archive has made it clear that the current copyright laws are out of date and need to be revised. The dividing line between what is fair use and what isn't fair use is blurred. The answer is not to simply amend current United States Code the way the NET Act of 1997 does. The answer must lie in clearly spelling out what is and what isn't fair use of copyrighted material.
    • Yes, I know it is a bit dated. ;-)
    • Actually, though perhaps it should be, under today's laws it's not at all clear that simply publishing guitar tabs is a fair use. It's not necessarily for nonprofit educational purposes just because a beginning guitar player downloads it, and it certainly uses a lot of the work and erodes the work's value, which includes the sale of printed music as well as phonorecords.
      • It's not necessarily for nonprofit educational purposes just because a beginning guitar player downloads it, and it certainly uses a lot of the work and erodes the work's value.

        Not necessarily, but the "necessarily" is why we have the judicial system. ;-)

        When I have used OLGA it was because I was a beginning guitarist and hadn't yet learned to figure out music on my own. No intention to resell anything - the only intention was to learn and to better my skill. THIS IS THE DEFINITION OF FAIR USE. I'm quite certain this is also the experience of thousands of others who frequented the site.

        I would challenge Harry Fox agency to show me a single case where OLGA has been used to harm a recording artist. This sort of strongarm action is one of the things that makes people distrust the recording industry at large.
        • I completely agree with your conclusion, but you should be aware that fair use only applies to people who have actually purchased the product. I think the key point here is whether or not a copyright of a song only applies to it's performance.
  • Albeit incomplete, but aren't they all...
    God bless transcribers.

    http://www.sing365.com/index.html
  • The HarryFox Agency tried to do the same thing to the Online Guitar Archive (OLGA) a couple of years ago. Kinda like lyrics.ch, the OLGA is comprised of ear transcriptions of songs for the guitar. Can't they just let it alone.

  • We tried to license them (Score:2, Informative)

    by sker ( 467551 )
    I tried to work a licensing deal with lyrics.ch a few months ago. That's when I found out about Harry Fox Agency's involvement. HFA listened politely to our proposal, and then let us know they were going to hold off on licensing lyrics for a while. I got the sense that they're working on trying to monetize that resource themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if we see that as a bargaining chip in MusicNet or Pressplay negotiations, and perhaps one of those services will offer access to lyrics with your subscription. Joy...
  • OLGA (online guitar archive) [olga.net] Has a huge listing of lyrics and tableture ( if you play guita/bass). I've been using that site since hmmm... 1995. All the song files are in ascii so console folks can dig it too.

  • Record Industry running scared. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by grubert ( 95988 ) on Sunday September 30, 2001 @12:03PM (#2370418) Homepage
    These talentless yahoos who run the recording industry know that technology will soon put them out of a job. The only reason for a record industry to exist is that you needed a lot of capital to press a n old fashoned vinel album. Now, with only a few thousand dollars, anyone can record and burn a CD as good in quality as one made by the recording industry ( of course, you need to have technical and musical talent :)

    The only musicians who support the recording industry are those who've gotten really rich or hope to do so. But, like any gold rush, the rock and roll gold rush is over. Too many people now know how to play an electric guitar. Musicians can still be successful, but the days of instant riches for the lucky few are coming to a close.

    That is how it should be. Talented, hard working people will always be able to make a living. The musicians who figure out how to make money w/o the record companies will be fruitful and happy.

    The record industry is in a mad rush to frighten people out of their fair-use rights, using legal terrorism.
  • Is he related to Mr. Clete, secretary of the Musicians' Guild?
    • Is [Harry Fox] related to Mr. Clete, secretary of the Musicians' Guild?

      Given that ``he'' appears to have a head with rocks in it rather than music with rocks in it, I'd say he was closer to Chrysoprase the loan-shark troll. (-:

  • If music companies had some real interest in online distribution maybe they could try and release a more feature laden product to compete with somebody's plain vanilla cd rip- a music format could be extended so to include the lyrics within the song file(or has this been done already?), and to really go that extra mile the text could be synced to the music, for karaoke or follow-the-bouncing-ball.

  • Another lyrics site (Score:2, Informative)

    by Adam9 ( 93947 )
    Another lyrics site that works great is this one [astraweb.com] that is hosted at Astralabs.
  • There's always The Archive of Misheard Lyrics [kissthisguy.com]. Not a reliable research source, but it sure is hilarious...
  • The thing that annoys me the most is that I can't find decent sheet music for songs. Example: the song 'You Must Love Me' from the movie-remake of Evita. It's a piano accompaniment, but the only music I can find (including on SongFile) is the crappy "Easy Piano" version they put out for almost everything. What I can't find is the original score. I once found a MIDI version of it somewhere, and I might still have it laying around.

    Maybe I could license the song, but none of the license categories seem to apply (no, I don't want to make 500 recordings of it minimum) Another annoying thing is movie soundtracks. Anyone ever try finding the score for the theme to Enemy of the State or Twister? Sheesh! I'm starting to think Harry Fox should be shot (but nah.. that wouldn't do anything - there's always another lawyer-money-grubber in line.)

  • I first stumbled across lyrics.ch almost four years ago when I was taking a voice class (scoff now, and you may not kiss my ring later), and since then, I've found that that was the only place to find lyrics to many, many songs. Damn greedheads, anyhow.

    One thing I wonder about: many of the songs at lyrics.ch are public domain - songs which have been around long enough that there is no copyright on them anymore. Does any intrepid soul have the wherewithal to mirror just those songs? Or will LarryWhoever do it as a public service?

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