Show HN: We made a spam-free lyric search engine | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: We made a spam-free lyric search engine

songrabbit.com

291 pointssongrabbit141 comments

Lots of AJAX with no state in the url. Means I can't send my friends to a search results page (bad) or to a lyrics page (worse).

true, we will be working on a remedy for this.

It doesn't have to be complex. I get around this simply by re-submitting if the hashtag is present: http://blurk.org/#tv-the+simpsons

Similar to your site in terms of "not storing, just search engine". I've put the javascript snippet for it at the bottom of the page source.

This should be live now - let us know if you have any more suggestions.

Second this. It also means I can't set up a quick search in Chrome. That's the only thing preventing me from using this all the time.

have you tried our Lyrics API developer.musixmatch.com ?

Linking to particular songs is live.

What is your view on copyright?

In 2006 the MPA had a crackdown on tablature and lyrics websites. I am not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure you can't just publish all lyrics, without infringing here and there.

What is your view on scraping?

It is unlikely you entered all lyrics yourself, but used an existing database. I personally wouldn't feel comfortable scraping or fetching my content from a site that hosts advertisements, and then republish those without advertisements. Did you find access to an opensource database, or is the service here more like a reversed Adblock?

I remember someone once posted about running one of these lyrics sites. I can't remember if I found it here or elsewhere.

Anyway, their point was that with a lyrics website, someone only wants to go to the website to find the lyrics. Once they have the lyrics they have no desire to look at other other lyrics - they arrive and then leave/bounce immediately. That is why the adverts on these sites are so spammy. They have to hammer you with adverts in that brief moment you are on the website, because you are not going to click through and engage with the site anywhere else. Also, since you probably don't even know what website you are on, you don't have any "lyric website loyalty", so it doesn't even matter if the ads are massively spammy.

I guess then the challenge is to make a website that somehow encourages engagement so the it doesn't have to be so spammy.

But, as a user, I don't want to engage with a lyrics site anymore than it's required to read/copy the lyrics. Simple information retrieval. Also, as a user I tend to remember which lyrics websites are more spammy than others and avoid them when doing Google search.

I guess then it is a challenge to monetize lyrics website, but someone would do a big service to humanity if he/she put lyrics on Wikipedia/Wikibooks-type website.

Fifth largest Mediawiki install worldwide is a lyrics site:

http://lyrics.wikia.com/Main_Page

Interestingly, after a couple dozen lyric searches, I did develop some lyric website loyalty. I'll still come in via search and leave almost immediately after, but I'll actively look for the sites in search results. Criteria include perceived correctness, readability, and not killing my browser (relative to other sites out there).

I also like Songmeanings' comment/user input area, which usually has sensible comments I am occasionally interested in reading.

I tend to click sing365.com links in the search results if I see them. They have a section for user comments which I like to browse. They also manage to load the page up with ads without bothering me. Their bright red "GET A RINGTONE!" text ad actually shows me where the lyrics start.

+1 for Songmeanings -- the layout is simple and easy to read and the comments generally are interesting.

According to the legal, you are not storing the lyrics. If that is the case, where are you sourcing them from? Can you give a little background on how the site works, what it runs on and other interesting details?

Possibly scraping the lyrics?

I was thinking that as well, but if they are not storing the data, that would mean a real time scrape? Seems a little troublesome. All it would take for the site they are scraping from to break the entire site is a single character change probably, then their regex fails.

Add chord charts, and I'll be a regular user. The existing tab/chord sites are just as bad as the lyrics sites for spamminess and nasty Flash ads (they're the one site I use regularly that leads me to want to install AdBlock).

This would be really interesting, we'll look into it

Sorry for the self-promotion, but you might find http://guitaryst.com to your liking :)

I don't have an account at any of the music services, and would have no desire to play along to songs, so that being the default workflow is not useful to me, though I guess it might be to some players.

When I try to just use the search function, it can't find chords for most of the stuff I look for. My first two searches was for chords for these songs: "Over the Edge" by The Wipers, "Don't Wanna Know if You Are Lonely" by Husker Du. When it does find something, I can't choose other options (sometimes a transcription sucks, and you have to check other versions). Also, when it does find it, it seems to lose it sometimes for no reason that is apparent to me...I switched back here after it found a version of "Over the Edge" and when I flipped back here to note that it could be found by going through a few combinations of band name and "Tabs" vs. "Chords", it was gone.

It just doesn't fit my workflow, at all, and is far more frustrating than the old method of googling and clicking until I find a decent version. I don't want to have to guess whether there will be chords or tabs or whether I need "The" in front of the band name (I'm still not actually sure which change made "Over The Edge" findable, but it was something)...I just want it to give me the best option, and the ability to choose if there's more than one option.

So, it looks really nice, but functionally it's simply not usable.

Nice clean cut site..I have a few suggestions to separate you guys from the others...I would make a 'bookmarklet', a few lines of js, that will spawn a input box asking for artist/track..OR the script can manipulate the current page they are on now, by copying what they have selected, because I know alot of people including myself, who see part of a lyric from a site, or facebook, and want to find the rest....Make a nice image, with the script as the url, and instructions for the user to drag it to there bookmarks toolbar so they can search even if they aren't at your site..Also, just as buro9 was saying..... Song Meanings/Interpretations/Understanding... People LOVE this, and here is a great example of it-> Say 'Harry & Sally' start dating..They both go to each of there homes after there date... and sally decides to post a song on her facebook about how she feels at that moment...Now Harry is wondering if this girl is really diggin him, or looking for a serious relationship etc..So over at his house, harry logs on facebook and sees that sally just posted a song just after ther date!!! What's harry going to do??? Look up those lyrics! And he might not completely understand the meaning of the song so he looks at what others have interpreted the song as...he now sees that sally doesnt want him to speak, she knows what hes feeling... (no doubt) lol just kidding but really, crazy example...I know first hand that this goes on alot..aha but anyway, ill post some more ideas soon!

What's wrong with http://lyrics.wikia.com/Main_Page?

(I really should have posted this as reply to when you mention there are no spam free lyric search engines)

well.. http://www.songrabbit.com/ is ad free :)

How do you think this will be sustainable? I remember a good reddit or HN thread asking why lyric websites seemed to be particularly ad-laden. The consensus was that due to the nature of the visitors, it was the only viable revenue stream. Users to these kind of sites really only visit for a short period and leave after they've found what they came for. Having said that, I have no suggestion on what would work.

take a look at www.instalyrics.com much better experience . sorry ;-(

The idea is great.

The search responses fail to find a lot of pretty standard songs (girls want to be with the girls fails to return the talking heads song, helicopter fails to return the xtc song, books about ufos fails to return the husker du song, ...). And september gurls returns the bangles cover ...

We are expanding the result pool right now

Also, other languages than english are pretty much non-existant.

The only ones I had any success with was "Ne me quitte pas" and "la vie en rose." Other Brel and Piaf songs didn't show up. Neither did any Serge Gainsbourg.

Hey that's a pretty great list of four songs to search for.

I need to put my search result in quotes to get relevant results for the song.

Users would generally tend to search for a song's first line or most frequently repeated phrase. Search results could be ordered based on that.

Back in 1997 when I and three others ran a record label called Jeepster, we had a few great bands on our label: Belle & Sebastian, Salako and Snow Patrol. (OK, Snow Patrol were less than great then, and perhaps now.)

One of the things I figured I should make was a web site in which fans were able to communicate with each other, the theory was simply that:

1) If fans kept the interest high between releases they'd be there still when we came with a new release

2) If someone was looking for a lyric or something they'd heard and we helped them find it, we might convert a stray passer-by into a fan

So I built something that you'd now call a crowd-sourcing site.

For every track, people could submit:

* Lyrics

* Mis-hearings

* Personal memories the lyrics evoke

* Interpretations/Understanding of the Lyrics

* Tablature for different instruments

All of which were votable so that the best tablature rose to the top, but others (perhaps harder ones) were still available.

It was highly compelling, you came for the lyrics but stayed for the personal memories and insight.

As a label we felt it was hugely successful. It definitely paid back in keeping the interest of fans, increasing that interest and creating new fans.

It worked so well that NME nominated us for best web site in their awards ceremony in early 2000 because they'd never seen a site in which the content was mostly created by fans and that the fans loved.

I left the label in 2000 to do other things. The system ticked over for a while, but the label never replaced me with another technically inclined person and when they wanted to change the styling of the song system they broke the PERL script and left it broke before taking it offline. Such a shame really.

Since then, whenever I look up lyrics, I've wondered why there isn't a comprehensive crowd-sourcing of all of the information around a song in the same vein that I did it, but including things like when it's been performed live or recorded in radio sessions. A real database about a song, what it means, who's covered it, how to play it, what it means.

The business model would be to sell stuff related to the song, affiliate fees for MP3 downloads and CD sales, affiliate link for the purchase of the official tablature books. Keep it simple, and keep adverts off of it. A wikipedia solely for songs and everything about a song.

The cost per transaction and storage is incredibly low as it's just text. And you could probably negotiate with publishing companies as right now they don't even get credit for this stuff let alone increased opportunity to sell what they have.

The PERL script in 1997 wasn't more than a simple thing that used flat files as a database for the 200+ tracks we'd released to then. Nowadays, for the complexity we're talking about, a weekend project in Django would suffice as a first pass. The hardest thing is just talking to the publishers, but truly, it's not as hard as some people imagine, there are fewer publishers than there are record labels.

How did you deal with copyright?

Labels don't hold copyright on the lyrics or any other part of the lyrics, tablature. Labels only hold copyright to the original recordings.

We didn't have a relationship with the publishers for our artists, as this is a separate deal that the artists make with other companies.

All we did was ask the publishing companies involved (i.e. Sony ATV - http://www.sonyatv.com/en-uk/ and EMI Music Publishing - http://www.emimusicpub.com/ ) whether we could reproduce user-contributed interpretations of lyrics.

Both of the publishing companies involved said yes, as from their perspective anything that helped promote the song and would increase the awareness of the song and therefore the likelihood of the song being used in advertising, film or other contexts was good for them. They also liked that we didn't reproduce official tablature as that recommended that product of theirs too.

So, we asked, and everyone said yes.

If you don't ask, your first interaction is probably going to be with their legal teams who are less inclined to even think yes.

In 2009 me and a couple of friends after being so amazed about Lyrics traffic thought the market was missing 3 main things:

1) a Worldwide licensing structure for anyone that wanted to work in the lyrics space

2) a Huge Lyrics DB properly matched with recording information (people search for artist's name + lyrics on google not the songwriter...)

3) An API

So we founded musiXmatch in late 2009 with the idea of helping anyone in the space but most of all : build the best experience around Lyrics.

Actually musiXmatch is The world's largest and Official Lyrics DB with worldwide agreement with all Top Music Publishers and +5,5 mln lyrics DB.

So now thanks to musiXmatch you don't need to deal with music publishers anymore .

Get a Lyrics API now > developer.musixmatch.com

Best, massimo

CEO & Founder musiXmatch

Most of the traffic to lyric sites originate from long-tail search keywords (414 million global broad match monthly searches for lyrics). Your site has no Googlebot crawlable data, barring you from participating in a share of the long-tail search volume.

That's okay, for now this just exists as a solution to the problem that no lyric sites exist which are not aggressively bad. Though, we might contend that a large amount of traffic comes from the long-tail search because there is no site worth going to - ie it doesn't matter which lyric site I use, so I might as well just google it.

I really like the site. One feature I would like to see implemented would be comments on each individual song. That's one of the main reasons I look up the lyrics, too see what the song means to other people.

I like your site a lot, but am wondering when you get hit for being various kinds of scrapers.

I wish you well, I am so glad to find that others hate lyrics sites as much as I do. And yet, I am often searching for lyrics (when I don't have Soundhound near me.)

I am able to use Google's Personal Blocklist to block out the worst of the worst sites. That leaves me with a pretty good solution.

http://lystener.com/ exists.

There must be a reason why these clean lyrics sites aren't more prominent.

There's also http://www.darklyrics.com/ but only for metal.

http://www.instalyrics.com exists

As does http://rapgenius.com for hip hop

I built my own at http://new.songvoodoo.com as well, so other sites do exist

Thanks for mentioning Lystener! I think it's because lyric sites aren't sticky. You're there for a song, and you're gone again. Lystener switches that around, kind of, but you still need the initial urge to look up a song lyric.

That, and I do a terrible job of promoting it.

How about moving the logo, search box, and nav to the side when showing lyrics so that I don't have to scroll so far down below the fold to read what I searched for?

Snippets would be good too (as Google etc does) to confirm you have the right song

We've experimented with a couple different interfaces once the lyrics are onscreen, but that sounds like it could work.

A couple people have suggested snippets, would you prefer the first lyrics of the song or somewhere in the middle?

The matching segment to your query +- a few lines?

Not "Songbunny" because "Songrabbit" quickly read can also be read as "Song Grabbit." Clever.

It's great, and I'll definitely be using it!

Please add a GET-param based search, e.g. http://songrabbit.com/search?q=sabaton+primo+victoria (BTW., no results :(), so that we could add it to browsers as webjumps/quick searches/however it's called - e.g. so that I could type just: 'l sabaton primo victoria', and the browser would take me to your site :).

Indeed. Searches are normally safe operations as defined by HTTP, so they really should be HTTP GET.

http://songrabbit.com/php/search.php?q=radiohead+i%27m+stuck...

And then it stores the results in a session/cookie of some sort, because you can then access the lyrics for the results by going to

http://songrabbit.com/php/retrieve.php?i=0 (specifying the index number 0 as the offset from the start of the result set)...each result is broken apart by <++>..kind of an odd way of doing things though

Linking to songs or search results is live now

Alright, HN, I'm out for the night. Leave a comment here or email songrabbit@songrabbit.com if you have any more suggestions or complaints. Godspeed

2 things:

1) Please show the first few lines of the song under each result

2) Please stack the results like traditional <li>s - the "cloud" effect makes them very hard to scan.

I just see a rabbit with headphones, and some low-contrast links to a legal page and a contact email. Is something broken?

A great idea - I have a real need for this and loathe absolutely loathe the experience on existing sites. No idea how you turn this into a business though.

A bigger, happier font and bigger text search box would be easier and nice

I tried searching for 'Que Cera' which the definitive version was that performed by Doris Day, surely, as evidenced by first results on google, wikipedia etc.. however your results were hannah montana (twice?) and a bunch of other folks singing songs not necessarily including the words 'Que Cera' in not including the 'definitive' version of this song.

One of the other things I hate about the existing lyrics sites is that they often get it wrong.. for instance for a favorite song of mine transforming the lyric 'its not a race' to 'it is a race' (which kinda is the whole point of that song). Reliability would be a reason I'd go back to a site I trust.

The song title is "Que Sera Sera".

I decided to test you a little bit and search for a lyric from a Janis Joplin song Another Little Piece of my Heart, "you know you got it when it makes you feel good" Without quotes this does not produce the song. Maybe increase the weight in the search results from keywords being located next to each other?

I find it really irritating that this site requires cookies to be settable for the display to work.

The only thing we store is a session variable of your search results - no personal information.

That is not the point. I do not need a session variable of my search results. I just need the results, displayed on my screen.

When showing results, how about showing a snippet of each song where the search terms appear, with the terms hilighted?

Also list the name of the song and the artist. For songs that have been performed by many artists, you could add "Also by AAA, BBB, and CCC."

Is there a good reason why the lyrics text is not right-aligned? I understand symmetry looks better in such a design, but it's much easier to follow along with a song when you don't have to consciously look for the beginning of the next line.

Nice! Sadly, the first lyric I thought to try ("song that doesn't end") didn't work. :)

The links at the upper right are so faint they almost disappear; a bit more contrast, please.

How do you plan to deal with the copyright issues that will inevitably get thrown at you? Your "legal" link says you don't store any copyrighted material, but I don't see any evidence that you load it from elsewhere, and in any case that hasn't protected the numerous "link sites" out there. I personally think you've done something awesome and reasonable here, but you will get hit by this at some point.

did you use quotes? try it without it.

I tried it both ways; without quotes it produces some results, but not the desired result: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_Song_That...

I like Dennis (and what he's all about) and the site is very clean! Nice.

But now where will I get ring tones for my motorola V3?

Seriously though, I like it.

I like it, just needs some polishing:

* Black text in dark gray boxes is hard to read

* The logo takes up too much vertical screen space

* You should really point to your sources

* Some meta information (song writer, year) would be nice.

* noscript tags are missing

Thanks for the input, neither of us are designers so we especially appreciate usability feedback. We'll be getting to work on these, and yes, I agree we should be pointing to our sources. I'll be committing changes once I get my network connection back from Irene

Standard search techniques work (ex put the query in quotes for exact match). Also the text under the logo is editable by anyone, so you see the most recent change.

fix the typo on http://www.songrabbit.com/legal.php

>>an innovative seach interface

Thanks, good catch

A few things:

1) I just tried a query (weezer "buddy holly") that had worked a couple of days ago but didn't now (it didn't work with quotes, either).

2) I miss the back button and, as others have said, the ability to bookmark anything

3) It would be nice to see the song title on the lyrics page. I know it's sometimes still in the search box, but I do miss it if I've changed my search (or if I just searched by artist).

1 and 2 are fixed. We'll work on 3.

Awesome that you guys are still following along here. I don't see a back button anywhere, but maybe with 2 you were referring to the ability to copy a link, which works great.

It seems really speedy tonight. I'm pretty sure part of this is because the user interface just makes it seem speedy, but maybe it's because it's not at the top of the front page anymore?

A back button should pop up when you select one of the search results (above the actual lyrics). What browser are you using?

And yeah we arent getting hit as hard as we were, so it's probably a bit quicker than last night

I searched for "Grizzly Bear Ready" looking for "Ready, Able" and got TechN9ne songs. Where are you scraping your data from?

I did something similar to this a year or two ago (http://www.lyricfuser.com)

I'm not sure how you guys are scraping the lyrics, but almost all of the large lyric sites ended up blocking my server's IP. You should do this in Javascript if possible to avoid getting blocked. Looks great though!

not sure if it fits you but there _are_ options to avoid scraping the lyrics sites, e.g. http://musixmatch.com/

Never knew about this - thanks!!

I can't figure out how to do anything here. I click the text below the logo and it disappears, and nothing else happens.

Try again, we just went down for a few minutes

I just tried again, it's working for me now.

The site is breakable by simply entering '<a href="#"></a>' in the logo text box. Just a heads up. :)

Looks like ya fixed it. Cheers!

Do you have any plans on including timestamps for the lyrics, so I could know when in the song the lyric is sung?

Here's a feature request: show a real-time stream of the searches people are doing. Reading some of the comments here, I'm intrigued as to what comes to people's minds when they try this service out. For example, I searched for "Under the Bridge" by Red Hot Chili Peppers. Why? I have no idea.

can you compare to http://instalyrics.com/ ?

This looks interesting. I prefer the (even more) minimalist design of OP's site, but lyrics automatically loading makes this one a winner (for the time being).

IL is Pretty good site, it's clean, intuitive, and surprisingly functional

Instalyrics is cool looking and the interface is nice, but it failed horribly to find lyrics to any of the songs i tried. Songrabbit just works for me.

Great start - glad someone finally did this. And it's good - I searched for "meet your downstairs" and the Amy Winehouse song I was looking for came up.

Maybe add a way for users to submit new lyrics? I don't know any of the legal implications.

I love what you're trying to do, but how will you monetize this? Will you pursue amazon based referrals for songs? (I'm guessing it won't add up unless you have scale) Or will you try to launch a "premium" service?

When I go to the site (Firefox & Chrome on Linux), I can't enter any search. I see the logo, with the text 'Song Rabbit' below, and when I click on the text it disappears. But I don't see any text input fields.

Something just went down, working on getting it back up right now. Sorry about that

Hi, I made instalyrics.com using the search API provided by musixmatch.com, there is also an extension for chrome here http://insta.ly/.chrome

I like the publicly editable tagline, it seems like a fun idea. There was something about sexual relations with bunnies however when I visited the site. Maybe a keyword filter would help?

We are working on filtering out malicious code right now, we'll start thinking about content after that ;)

If this was remotely legal, Google would have done it 10 years ago.

> If this was remotely legal, Google would have done it 10 years ago.

While legal issues may be the reason Google didn’t do this, it is hardly possibility. I don’t see value in a comment like this. If you have more information or insider knowledge, share it.

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, whoever. It's a massive and lucrative market, yet the legal challenges are well established. Some sites have been shut down, and the remaining big sites are outside of US jurisdiction and/or really really shady.

Minimalism is nice, but take a look how for example Facebook shows a link to this site. Too minimalist. (This of course does not matter if you don't want the link to be shared).

You should put a link to the original source. Even if their website is full of ads they deserve credit for the lyrics. Also in case of mistakes we have somewhere to report to.

Plus one on "Less-than three" in legal Colon Right-Parenthesis

I like the idea of allowing users to personalize the slogan under your rabbit logo. Was it put there on a whim or is there an elaborate theory behind it?

You should integrate more sites (assuming that's how this works). A query that I expect to work is "Simeon's Dilemma", which currently returns no results.

This will be deployed post-hurricane

Super cool, I enjoy the clean interface. Changing the URL would be nice for linking. Lyric sites are pretty bad ATM.

How do you plan to get revenue, if there are no ads?

we are currently working on a hash based linking system.

You might consider using real query URLs such as /?q=query or /q/query , and using the HTML5 history API to load those query URLs via javascript without changing the page. That gives you unique URLs without just using anchors, making it feasible to index.

I would encourage you to consider sending people to a completely new URL instead of loading the lyrics with Ajax, unless the browser supports the HTML5 History API.

That way, people who use modern browsers get the original user experience, but those who use legacy browsers have to see a quick refresh. Your site is so clean already that I doubt most IE users would notice the load time.

As an alternative, support hashes and the history API so most people see the "clean" URLs.

> Changing the URL would be nice for linking.

Another problem is that the back button is broken.

You have the lyrics for lightsabre cocksucking blues. There is no spam. You will be my first stop for lyrics searches from now on. Thanks.

glad you like the site. enjoy

Nice work, I typed "pompatous" and the results were spot on. I wish some one would give your a good domain name... maybe jig.com.

Almost all search results contain the word "lyrics" in them, you can remove that and enhance the minimalistic view of the webpage

Thanks so much for the sugestions! Sorry if I'm not getting to your comment individually - my internet has been hurricane'd

That feels oddly strange on a lyrics site. To not being bombarded with Google Ads left, right & center!

Thanks for the clean interface.

"the text under the logo is editable by anyone, so you see the most recent change." -- Did this function cause an error?

Yup. Should be fixed now

Thanks! Very cool site. Well done.

FINALLY!!

Thank you so much for this. Is there a search API?

Not yet - this was literally built over the last two days. But we could make one!

Please give us some API access so we can start making some cool apps/plugins! :)

Awesome. I'd like to be notified. Got a mailing list?

Just shoot an email to songrabbit@songrabbit.com and we'll let you know once its up.

here we go your search api

https://developer.musixmatch.com/documentation

Kudos - I tried something reasonably obscure: Jebediah - Military Strongmen and it got it.

Nice. I once used LyricsAMP and that was fantastic (right now it's dead)

Please put keyboard focus on the search box when entering the website.

I doubt you are completely legal (I am not a lawyer anyway), as the contents are delivered via your own API: http://www.songrabbit.com/php/retrieve.php?i=0

That link is dynamic based on your current session, so it may work for you, but if someone hasn't searched for anything then they wont see anything on your link.

Are the lyrics retrieved using client-side code?

It isn't working for me. Tried Safari and Firefox.

Should be fixed, sorry about that

what technologies/architecture you guys use behind the scenes to power this site? pretty damn cool site by the way :)

looks nice and clean, but i'm pretty sure you need to licence lyrics or you may run into trouble...

Please increase the font size.

higher contrast, bigger fonts

Don't people use google for this?

And then go to one of many ugly, spammy websites, looking like sh*t and sometimes with unreliable lyrics. I appreciate an alternative, and I'll be definitely using it from now on.

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