Lyrics Life

[incka]

http://www.lyricslife.com/

Finally I have a lyrics site! (I've been wanting one for years) :cool:

I wanted a simple yet stylish design that would load quick and look good.

Mike did the Search script and someone from sitepoint did the rest of the scripting. Total cost was just $325 for scripting by both parties.

The database has about 126,000 lyrics in total in it (yet for some reason hasn't got any Edwyn Collins or Joy Division lyrics - I will have to add them myself when I get some time).

I plan to add a amazon box and a link to iTunes on it, as well as include the search facility in an IE toolbar I am making.

My November target is going to be to get by the end of the month LyricsLife getting 5k uniques per day (without cheating by buying popups from Dan Grossman, etc).

So what do you think? Do you have any suggestions? Do you want to do link exchanges (Music/Entertainment sites only please)?

[Westech]

Looks good. As I expected, there are R.E.M. lyrics featured right on the front page!

Did you purchase the database from somewhere?

[Kyle]

Well done incka.

Keep us updated on traffic stats, I'm curiuos.

I like your clean design, and lack of extreme advertising. Many lyrics sites that rank at the top of google are extremely slow and very annoying to navigate.

[incka]

I'm going to submit it to fastclick soon, however I am expecting the iPod offer to out proform what I could make using fastclick.

I'll AIM you occasionaly with traffic details Kyle, unless others want to know too.

Part of the scripting I bought was a spider which was named SlurpLyrics.

I don't keep up with popular culture (to say the least) so if anyone can tell me any artists (if you can call them that!) that are popular at the moment so I can do links to them at the side please do.

[Blue Cat Buxton]

Looks nice

240 lyrics from David Bowie - Wow

Why not post the trafic details - I would be interested in how quickly they grow

[incka]

Sure, I'll post them then, upon request only though (and don't ask for about a month)

[Westech]

SlurpLyrics spider? Does that mean that it spiders other people's pages and takes lyrics from them?

[incka]

Yes. Nothing illegal about that.

[ASP-Hosting.ca]

Yes. Nothing illegal about that.

I'm not sure how lyrics copyright works, but aren't you supposed to get permission from the lyrics' authors in order to publish them on your site?

I don't think you can freely publish copyrighted works, but again I might not be right in the lyrics case.

[Westech]

Yes. Nothing illegal about that.

Oh. In that case, I'm off to write a spider to copy all the flash games from your games site and add them to mine. While I'm at it, I think I'll grab all the definitions from your dictionary site too! :)

[incka]

Go on, they aren't copyright, but don't take the descriptions from my games site as they are copyrighted. People take all the definitions from my dictionary site daily.

[moonshield]

very good lyrics site... perhaps the best ive seen... much better then the top 10 on google.

i am working on such a site also but it is more towards 'heavy metal' music. This is because it is quite difficult to find lyrics to metal songs on the major sites. I am thinking that targeted lyrics sites will do better in traffic and such.

[incka]

Thanks, that's one of the nicest compliments I've had in months :D

[Mike]

Oh. In that case, I'm off to write a spider to copy all the flash games from your games site and add them to mine. While I'm at it, I think I'll grab all the definitions from your dictionary site too! :)

I don't *think* you can copy whole collections on sites, or that's what I was told :)

[moonshield]

Oh. In that case, I'm off to write a spider to copy all the flash games from your games site and add them to mine. While I'm at it, I think I'll grab all the definitions from your dictionary site too! :)


Im not a law student, yet, but that does not sound too legal to me.

[ASP-Hosting.ca]

Chris, are you willing to share your opinion on this matter?

[jonnyhilfiger]

:confused: Surely you can't publish these lyrics without the copyright holders permission? You are after all benefitting from publishing them (through advertising) so the copyright holder will want a cut.

I guess your site could go unnoticed but I would have thought you're heading for trouble unless all the lyrics are copyright free or you have the authors permission.

Just my 2p

[Westech]

I was kidding. I'm not going to copy your content. I guess I should have used <sarcasm> tags.

My point was that even if the copyright to something (like lyrics, dictionary definitions, or whaterver) isn't held exclusively by the owner of a website, it's still not ethical to use a bot to slurp it all up from his site. It may or may not be legal (I'm really not sure,) but it certainly isn't ethical.

Also, if people are ripping your dictionary site daily, you should try to identify and block the useragents of the bots they are using.

[Kyle]

It is not unethical to use a bot to obtain lyrics. Right now I'm not going to address legal issues like who has the copyright to lyrics (obviously the artist and record label does).

When the vast majority of lyrics sites get lyrics from other sites (the same applies to cheat code sites), thats just how its done. Its not about whether its ethical or not.

Where else are these lyric sites getting their lyrics? You can't expect the owner of the lyrics site to buy all the CDs to all the artists and manually type in the lyrics from CD sheets?

It's like one giant collaberation of lyric sites acquiring lyrics over the years. Some webmasters got them from CDs, some webmasters got them from artist's websites.

[eMEraLdwPn]

i'll do a link exchange with you

[Chris]

I've heard of one lyric site getting shut down for copyright infringement.

Its a risk, under US law I believe you'd owe the sum of $25,000 per song.

Of course, this is one of those things that are rarely pursued. But we all know how rabid the music industry has been. I personally would not open a lyrics site for this reason.

[eMEraLdwPn]

the music companies are too busy with file-sharing programs to care about lyrics right now, imo. also, i don't think you could just have your site shut down, since a lot of the lyrics are from a variety of record labels, and probably unsigned artists as well. most likely you'd get a cease and desist letter from the record company saying which artists they represent, and that you need to remove the lyrics for those artists. they can't demand that you remove ALL the lyrics, because they don't own the copyright to all of them.

[Kyle]

I've heard of one lyric site getting shut down for copyright infringement.

Its a risk, under US law I believe you'd owe the sum of $25,000 per song.

Of course, this is one of those things that are rarely pursued. But we all know how rabid the music industry has been. I personally would not open a lyrics site for this reason.

I did a free clipart site about 4.5 years ago. It received masses of traffic, and got all my free clipart from other 'free clipart' sites.

There was some company who owned licenses to a bunch of images that floated around these free clipart sites and weren't supposed to, and the company was doing mass lawsuits against these sites. In the email I received from them they mentioned how they weren't going to just ask me to take down the images, cause this proved ineffective for them, and were going to proceed with the lawsuit at $1000 per image (8 images total).

I emailed them back explaining I don't have that much money, and was trying to save up for college. So I just took down the site, and they never contacted me again.

This was a big deal a few years ago, and TONS of companies were being sued by this one company. I even think Lycos got sued.

Does anyone recall any details? Sorry for the change of subject, but I thought others here may remember this.

[Westech]

It is not unethical to use a bot to obtain lyrics. Right now I'm not going to address legal issues like who has the copyright to lyrics (obviously the artist and record label does).

When the vast majority of lyrics sites get lyrics from other sites (the same applies to cheat code sites), thats just how its done. Its not about whether its ethical or not.

Where else are these lyric sites getting their lyrics? You can't expect the owner of the lyrics site to buy all the CDs to all the artists and manually type in the lyrics from CD sheets?

It's like one giant collaberation of lyric sites acquiring lyrics over the years. Some webmasters got them from CDs, some webmasters got them from artist's websites.


Well, in my opinion it is unethical. (Sorry Sean. I'm not trying to pick on you specifically. This has turned into more of a theoretical discussion now.)

Just because a lot of people do it doesn't make it OK. I can understand copying and pasting, but when it's automated, I think it crosses the line.

Let's take Sean's site as an example. The html file for each song page is about 10k. The site advertises that it has over 100,000 songs. This puts the bandwidth needed to spider all the lyrics at just under 1 gig. That's not such a big deal if just one person does it, but what if many people start doing it? Just 20 people a day slurping up all of his lyrics would use over 500 gig of bandwidth per month. In addition to the bandwith issue, this would cause a large unnecissary load on the server. That's a lot of bandwidth and server load to give up for something that the website is obviously not intended for.

Consider the issue of email spam. It wouldn't be that big a deal if just one or two people did it, but if one person can do it then everyone else can do it and it quickly spirals out of control and causes a huge inconvenience.

Back to the original topic, the more I look at Sean's site the more impressed I am. It's very well designed and very well SEOed without looking like it's SEOed. It's been interesting watching his skills mature over the past year or so on this forum. Congrats on a job well done!

[Kyle]

Westech, you have now changed my opinion. I was incorrect in saying that automatically acquiring lyrics with a bot was OK. In my mind, I was more referring to copy/pasting lyrics being an ethical way.

I agree now that is unethical to bot the acquisition of lyrics, but it is still done by the masses.

Very good example with the spam. Maybe a good resolution is to automate acquisition of lyrics at only a few hundred per day over a few months :).

[Chris]

I know a guy who recently was sued, along with 5 or 6 other websites, for posting copyrighted pictures. His lawyer figured the research/documentation for filing the lawsuit probably cost the plaintiff $70,000. He was one of the smaller sites being sued though, and he was just a college student as well. He had recently negotiated the sale of a domain for $30,000 and I think they ended up taking all of that or most of it as a settlement.

[Kyle]

Chris, scary stuff. I got lucky those many years ago. $8,000 was more than the total amount of money made in my life up to that point.

[incka]

Like Icebane says it's an internet fact that slurping lyrics and cheats goes on.

The site that got shut down was Lyrics.ch or something, Miki (SWD) told me about it.

I don't just slurp lyrics, I've added quite a few myself from ones that I noticed my bot hadn't found...

[AndyH]

I think before any recording lable/artist would go ahead and file a law suit against you they would send you a cease or desist ... at which point you would hopefull comply.

[MarkB]

Music publishing companies (such as Zomba and others) are increasingly becoming tetchy about people using their copyrights - even MIDI files have come under focus, and a few webmasters I've known of have received cease and desist letters. So don't think that all you need worry about are artists or labels who sell tangible products - publishing companies, or simply are seeking to protect their royalties, will happily come down on someone if they can be bothered ;)

[incka]

My arguement will be that lyrics INCREASE sales of music.

[Blue Cat Buxton]

But if you were to look at it this way:

REM want to publish a book of their lyrics - all their bigest fans will surely buy it, a great money maker for them

But because the lyrics are all over the internet, available for free, no one does

That is a demonstrable loss, and something they could sue over.

Given that there is news today of record companies taking action over music downloaders / file sharers in the UK they are not afraid to take action.

[Blue Cat Buxton]

My arguement will be that lyrics INCREASE sales of music.

Perhaps you could send the record companies an invoice for all you hard work :D

[incka]

R.E.M. won't be bothered - In a radio 1 interview when asked about people bootlegging their records they said they supported them doing it, and even bootleg other peoples records themselves - However those produced bands that don't right their owns songs might be a different matter...

Amazon and iTunes commision should be enough - As soon as I add them, at the moment I'm too busy getting a new affiliate club started.

[incka]

It has got into fastclick, but with the CPMs I'm seeing on adsense and ipod banner I'm not sure there is much use for them other than thier rectangles...

[intelliot]

nice job, incka -

i have one suggestion to make the site design look better:
make the left menu the same width as the google ads; this will make the page balanced on both sides.

hope this helps

btw, is the ipod banner CPA?

[incka]

Yes, it is CPA.

[Ronny]

I've heard of one lyric site getting shut down for copyright infringement.

Its a risk, under US law I believe you'd owe the sum of $25,000 per song.

Of course, this is one of those things that are rarely pursued. But we all know how rabid the music industry has been. I personally would not open a lyrics site for this reason.

I have to agree. About 4 months ago I thuoght about creating a lyrics site, and for that reason I didn't do it. Legally complicated.

Anyway, so far this is the best lyrics site I've seen, not too much ads (Although it's impolite, I hope you won't get fastclick-accepted with that site - Their ads just suck.), and sooo much [correct] lyrics! Straight to my bookmarks. G'bye, poor old letssingit!

Another last thing - I think you're doing great there with the URLs. If you find a way to use this signs (') instead of this replacement (,,) you'll see better results with songs like "Don,,t-forget-me" ;)

Concentrate on google, this is the most important point here. Beat your competitors, they just don't worth the 1st place at the SERPs.

------
Ohhh BTW, sorry I wasn't here at websitepublisher for a few months now, I think I'm back :) Was kind of busy and forgot about the site. Maybe a newsletter will help? Dunno.

[incka]

Well it has got into fastclick, yet it is doing better off Incka Media ads (my own ad network, heh heh)...

[Ronny]

Cool :)
Is it a real established ad network or just direct advertiser/publisher agreements?

[incka]

At the moment the latter, in a few weeks the former.

[moonshield]

that is some good stuff... how much is it to the join?