iTunes to get words of its own

Apple may begin offering song lyrics

26 April 2007 12:59 GMT / By Ryan Haynes

This is yet to be confirmed but with Apple moving further multimedia it looks like the company may opt in for some old fashioned text-based services. This would be in the form of providing song lyrics to iTunes users.

A proposed deal between Apple and digital media company Gracenote could soon see the Mac maker serve song words on its online store.

It's being made out that this move is a larger industry-backed push to stifle proliferation of unauthorised websites that currently dominate the market, often offering inaccurate lyrics and never compensating artists for their work. However, it could be Apple trying to cash in on the frequent searches of song lyrics. So Gracenote confirms:

“Song lyrics are continually among the top 10 searches performed on major search engines, though the results often provide consumers a frustrating experience filled with inconsistent and incomplete lyrics, and annoying pop-ups”, said Craig Palmer, president and chief executive officer of Gracenote.

Gracenote and Yahoo announced a licensing deal allowing Yahoo Music to offer legal, licensed song lyrics from hundreds of thousands of songs to its customers.

Then we really won’t have an excuse for not knowing the words…

Full tags

Software, iTunes, Gracenote, Lyrics