Autopsy of a failed side project | Hacker News Reader

Autopsy of a failed side project

subimage.com

57 pointssubimage19 comments

Has the site been put down? Why didn't you keep it as a fun little side project? I don't understand why the goal has to always be a $17 million exit. I've built things like facetache.com and openingthemes.tv cause I thought they were fun, not for some massive financial windfall.

The author mentioned toward the end: Liability. Sooner or later a song owner was going to sue for copyright infringement.

It was impossible to afford licenses for the lyrics our site contained. You can go two ways...fly illegally (which most of these sites do) and risk getting sued, or pay an outrageous copyright fee yearly to license tracks for display.

For a "fun side project" I wasn't willing to accept that risk.

http://subimage.com/blog/2012/12/15/lyricful-looking-for-inv...

Aah, ok. Seems stupid to sue as the site promotes the songs (via iTunes, etc...) but the music industry aren't exactly known for rational decision making.

If you are successfully charging some people for a license, you really have to sue the people who don't get a license. Otherwise your licensees will stop paying.

SEO is a war of attrition more than anything. Unless you're working the blue ocean strategy, it takes up to two years to get sustained top search rankings (using legitimate SEO methods and best practices).

By the looks of it, Lyricful deserved better. Hopefully someone with deeper pockets can bring it back.

Blue ocean strategy?

Blue Ocean Strategy: Creating new demand in an uncontested market space[1]. Summon the Warrior[2] was my attempt at this.

Red Ocean Strategy is a highly competitive market space, and what Lyricful were engaged in.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy [2]http://summonthewarrior.com/

I thought it was kind of obvious that all the sites are spammy because they are illegal anyway. Its just lazy to set up a content based business model without owning any content. Now a service to people who do own the content, that might have been worthwhile, monetise your lyrics.

Sad to see this site go. Looked like a great project. So just out of pure curiosity, where would someone go to legally acquire lyrics for a particular song ? (sorry to say this but this sounds absolutely retarded to me.. what exactly are you damaging by publishing lyrics to songs ? I don't see the copyright argument at all.. it's not like someone will not buy a song because they can access the lyrics for free online ?)

Perhaps the Record Labels believe that a differentiator between buying a CD and downloading for free is the lyrics book that comes with (most) CDs.

Lyrics sites have been in the copyright crosshairs for 15 years now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Lyrics_Server

It's not super clear to me how someone like Rap Genius is getting around this. Their policy page says they respect DMCA requests, but if they are unlicensed, they would get a DMCA request for every single page on their site. So my guess is some kind of blanket license to someone like the Harry Fox Agency. They have the money for it.

We didn't see a problem with it (and neither did our lawyers) until that $6.6M judgement played out against another lyric site with similar "user contributed" content.

There are a couple of routes to go legal - one being Musixmatch, which charges at minimum $20k per year for a blanket license.

An email straight from them:

"We offer data licensing packages, through our scalable Lyrics API, that are customized to meet your needs with annual fees ranging from USD $20,000 to higher depending on the audience for the data and which data are being licensed. We are not able to offer any sort of data license for less than USD $20,000."

It was a good try. Sometimes it works: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dpndp/i_run_one_of_tho...

is it ok if I suggest "http://sideprojectors.com"? Might be able to find others who might want to take over. :)

Fixed link: https://www.sideprojectors.com/

Interesting site. Thanks

Neat, but without the ads what was your plan for making money?

We had song players for iTunes / Amazon for each song displayed, links for concert tickets, and ringtones.

Ads, but tastefully done I think. Definitely not any popups, no Google Adwords, etc.

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