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Music Industry Looking for Lyrics Payoff 205

Posted by Zonk from the those-lyrics-look-unlicensed-there-kid dept.
theodp writes "U.S. digital entertainment company Gracenote has obtained licenses to distribute the lyrics of more than 1 million songs. Music publishers are still mulling legal action against Web sites that provide lyrics without authorization." From the article: "Ralph Peer II, Firth's counterpart at peermusic, said licensing lyrics should boost worldwide music publishing revenues, estimated at about $4 billion annually. Peer said he hopes the unauthorized sites will seek licenses. 'I think we'll see a reasonable increase, as much as a 5 percent increase, in industry music publishing revenues five years out from where we are right now,' Peer said."
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Music Industry Looking for Lyrics Payoff More

Music Industry Looking for Lyrics Payoff

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  • Peer, that bastard! (Score:4, Funny)

    by shish ( 588640 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:09AM (#15730419) Homepage
    'as much as a 5 percent increase, in industry music publishing revenues five years out from where we are right now,' Peer said.

    Not content with a life of disconnecting IRC users for fun [uncyclopedia.org], he's now joined the music industry? What a bastard >:|

    • Currently on EFnet

      peer is peer@ip.address * Life is a risk.
      peer on @#sandnes.vgs @#ÅFK #rettasiå
      peer using irc.daxnet.no Burn some dust & eat my rubber
      peer End of /WHOIS list.

      Since EFnet has almost no controls of any kind, anyone can be peer.
      The last time I checked, the message was "I reset you all"

  • Great... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by John Betonschaar ( 178617 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:10AM (#15730423)
    Now all we need is some form of DRM that makes you pay every time you read the lyrics, or someone reads them to you. And then some lawsuits for people that steal the lyrics by transcripting, storing or sharing them with others... Because we all know you just cannot remember and or write down stuff you hear on television or radio, or even worse, save other people the hassle of having to write them down themselves...

    It's 'bout time them lyrics-stealing pirate bastards start paying for their criminal behaviour...

    • Re:Great... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hackstraw ( 262471 ) *

      Personally, I'm waiting for them to put an anal probe up our ass and shocking us when we hear a song on the radio if we don't pay.

      I don't see the problem here. Songs, by definition, have lyrics/singing in them, and people go to these sites to read the lyrics after hearing the song on the radio and they can't get the whole thing or don't understand some words, or because looking at the lyrics is different than having them sung to you. People hit these sites after a quick google search and they either click

      • Re:Great... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by TubeSteak ( 669689 )

        AFAIK, there is not "Official" RIAA compliant version available whatsoever, but these people feel "they are above the law!" and just want to pull access to these sites, even though the song is the canonical source.

        You do know that someone wrote the lyrics to that song.
        That someone is not always the singer.

        Either way, "Someone" owns the copyright to those words & recieves royalties for their work.

        Just because it wasn't enforced in the past doesn't mean that the lyric copyright owner(s) can't crack down n

        • You do know that someone wrote the lyrics to that song.
          That someone is not always the singer.

          yes. There are many channels for lyrics. Some are basically stolen from random individuals who reply to small ads in the back of Rolling Stone or whatever with little to no compensation to the author. Some are fulltime lyricists like Robert Hunter or John Barlow, and they made sure they were compensated for their lyrics from the beginning.

          Now, people that write "lyrics" but don't have them in songs are not lyrici

  • It will happen (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:10AM (#15730432)

    There's no way Gracenote would make a deal like this unless they had an agreement that the record companies would bludgeon Gracenote's competition to death with copyright. It's no problem for the record companies and it makes what they are licensing to Gracenote so much more valuable.

    It will probably be easier than going after people who share MP3s - lyrics sites are generally ad-supported, with the ad providers like Google mentioning copyright problems in their terms & conditions, so there's no need for lawyers, just complain to the advertisers and "cut off their air supply".

    This won't be the first time this has happened, either. Anybody remember lyrics.ch [wikipedia.org]? Raided by the police for telling people the words to songs! Does it get any more ridiculous?

    • Just wait until they try to stop people humming songs on the bus, they may even start a pay for thought service where money is deducted from you bank every time you get an song stuck in you head. It all looks like copyright infringement to me.

  • Not unexpected really (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Heir Of The Mess ( 939658 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:12AM (#15730449)
    Afterall the lyrics are copyrighted, the same as music, movies, and books, but it has been a nice way to track down "that song" that you heard on the radio by just typing a few of the lyrics you heard into Google. Well I guess that's dead. The music companies have shown they are willing to do anything to get every last cent they can using their old ways. Watching a subtitled music video has a lot of copyrights attached to it: The lyrics, the musical note order, the performance by the artist, the video, and potentially the font used to show the lyrics in the subtitles. From all the effort that has gone into producing those parts they need their due payment, afterall with rising fuel prices its getting very expensive to run enormous yaghts and exotic car collections.

    Eventually the media companies are going to push too hard. Many big companies like to ride the line, and it seems legally that with the current political influence they have the media companies can keep on moving that line so they don't cross it. The question is, where has the consumer market set that line? People might express some negative feelings about record companines extorting money from single mothers living in poverty, but they still keep on buying, so I guess that line hasn't been reached yet either. There's too many other things to worry about these days...like not being able to post a comment on slashdot for 6+ hours because Database maintenance is taking place. Noooo!

    • I buy mine from allofmp3.com

      That way RIAA doesn't get my money and yet i get to download all latest songs...

    • Re:Not unexpected really (Score:4, Interesting)

      by shish ( 588640 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:27AM (#15730532) Homepage
      Eventually the media companies are going to push too hard

      Eventually? They haven't pushed hard enough for average joe to stop buying, but they're already shooting themselves in the feet in quieter ways -- how are you going to buy "that song" that you heard on the radio, if google won't tell you what it is, for example?

      • Actually, they have pushed hard enough for people to stop buying. Havn't you read about how music sales are down? Of course, they blame piracy, which makes them crack down even harder, causing more people to get disgusted and stop buying from them... Seriously, I hate being treated like a theif everytime I buy a CD, if they keep that up maybe I'll just become a thief and get the much better customer service available from illegal bootleggers.

    • Bad move for music discovery (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Nerdposeur ( 910128 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @08:00AM (#15730706) Journal
      "...it has been a nice way to track down "that song" that you heard on the radio by just typing a few of the lyrics you heard into Google."

      I do this all the time, and I disover new music that way. I certainly wouldn't pay to do it though - after all, I'm just deciding whether I like something enough to explore further. It's like this - hear it on the radio, search on Google, read lyrics of a few songs to get a feel for the band, maybe download a song or two (or listen to clips on Amazon), and if I'm still interested, buy something.

      If I really enjoy music, a large part of that is because I like the lyrics. But I doubt I'd pay someone else to try out their product. You know, in some businesses, they pay YOU to try out the product.

      As a musician, I put my lyrics up on my site for free so people can spend more time and thought on my songs, and perhaps be drawn to my site through search. Seems kinda obvious that this is a good thing for everyone.

      The only plus I see to the Gracenote system is that "official" lyrics should be accurate. Personally I'd like to get them packaged with a download, so that if I'm listening to a song I can click and get the lyrics to come up with a bouncing ball on where I am in the song. Seems like that would be easy to program and add next to nothing to file size.

      • The only plus I see to the Gracenote system is that "official" lyrics should be accurate.

        That, of course, depends on your definition of accurate. Simon and Garfunkel, for example, often sung slightly different lyrics to the 'official' ones (i.e. the ones Paul Simon wrote down). Are the accurate ones the ones that were sung, or the ones that were written?

    • Eventually the media companies are going to push too hard

      What do you mean eventually?

    • it has been a nice way to track down "that song" that you heard on the radio by just typing a few of the lyrics you heard into Google. Well I guess that's dead.

      It won't be dead, it just won't be legal to display them unless you've paid the liscensing fees. It means the site you go to after you've entered the lyrics will have coughed up their fees and now they're just trying to make money off of the ads you've got to wade through to see the lyrics.
    • and potentially the font used to show the lyrics in the subtitles

      This is a nitpick, but just FYI... you can copyright the file used to describe how the letters are drawn, but you can't copyright the look of the letters. Yeah, it doesn't make much sense from a protecting-artistic-work point of view, and people grumble about it often. (source) [nwalsh.com]

  • Pay for lyrics? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:13AM (#15730451)
    Fair use is no longer an option and we can look forward to root kits on our computers to 'crack down' on illegal copying? I think it is time to tell the recording industry how we feel about their draconian measures. Could you go without purchasing or even downloading music for 3 months? 6 months? a year? to prove a point?

  • Top Ten Things the RIAA would Like To Make Illegal (Score:5, Funny)

    by kthejoker ( 931838 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:14AM (#15730460)
    Top Ten Things the RIAA would Like To Make Illegal

    10. Whistling, humming, scatting, finger snapping, head bobbing, and any other form of "grooving" (per the Groove Memorandum of 1982.)
    9. Refusing the blue pill after attending an Outkast concert.
    8. Not answering your cell on the 1st ring in order to hear to more of "Clocks."
    7. Fair use? More like "unfair abuse", am I right!?
    6. Quoting Taking Back Sunday on mySpace.
    5. Thinking about quoting Taking Back Sunday on mySpace.
    4. Thinking about thinking about quoting Taking Back Sunday on mySpace.
    3. Being Taking Back Sunday. (I kid, I kid.)
    2. Transferring all your iTunes songs to your new bigger iPod. (You've got money for a new bigger iPod, don't you?)
    1. Not handing them all of your money, every day, the second you earn it.

  • Worse still, it will likely put this guy out of business, and that would be a cryin' shame.

    When all lyrics are downloaded, and none have to be interpreted, something very important but likewise intangible about rock-n-roll is lost.

    Tom Waits, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

    Woo Woo Woo.

    • Re:The Final Sign That Rock-N-Roll Is Dead (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:19AM (#15730497)
      Damn. Lost the link in all the /. server screwiness this morning: Here ya go, as originally written circa 3am:

      Worse still, it will likely put this guy [kissthisguy.com] out of business, and that would be a cryin' shame.

      When all lyrics are downloaded, and none have to be interpreted, something very important but likewise intangible about rock-n-roll is lost.

      Tom Waits, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

      Woo Woo Woo.

  • Lyrics sites (Score:3, Insightful)

    by a_nonamiss ( 743253 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:14AM (#15730464)
    I think this is just the music industry looking for revenue where they had previously written it off. Remember that they sued lyrics.ch (the original lyrics site) out of existance right before the MP3 phenomenon hit. Then when MP3's hit, people "stealing" lyrics (yeah, it even sounds funny...) looked like small potatoes compared to people "stealing" whole songs. Now that the've more or less accepted the fact that they're not going to be able to eliminate P2P completely, they're going after revenue wherever they can. I think it's going to be interesting to see them go after sites that are hosted in other (non Western friendly) countries. It'll be easy enough to take down the ones in the US, but I doubt they'll have much headway in Belize, Romania, Estonia, etc. They're having enough trouble with AllOfMP3.com, and that's in Russia. (I think)
  • I believe it was the position of lyrics.ch (long since driven out by music publishers) that the lyrics they post are not the lyrics to the songs per say, but the interpretations of the lyrics made by their users. Yeah, that didn't work either. (sigh) You'd think publishers would realize that easy access to their lyrics makes their product more valuable, not less...

    • Re:Here's a dodge... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by BetaJim ( 140649 )

      You'd think publishers would realize that easy access to their lyrics makes their product more valuable, not less...

      Absolutely! Easy access to song lyrics has also caused me to buy new music before. Numerous times when I'm listening to the radio in my car a rockin' song will play and the ignorant announcer never tells who the band was. My trick is to remember a phrase from the song and later type the phrase and the work lryics into google. This is how I discovered the White Strips.

      Charging for lyrics

      • Song discovered: Hate Me by Blue October.
        Method of discovery: Heard the song on the radio, typed lyrics into Google.
        Purchase: Bought the entire album on iTunes AND bought the CD (accident.. but.. now I have two copies!)
        Price: $9.90

        Song discovered: Untitled by Simple Plan
        Method of discovery: Heard the song on the radio, typed lyrics into Google.
        Purchase: Bought the song on iTunes
        Price: $0.99

        Song discovered: Animal I Have Become by Three Days Grace
        Method of discovery: Heard the song on the radio, typed lyrics

  • I can't decide (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kripkenstein ( 913150 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:15AM (#15730469) Homepage
    On the one hand, this is another of those "it's our intellectual property, dammit" cases that seem so ridiculous - what is to stop lyrics sites from setting up shop in e.g. Russia, where it might be legally impossible to shut them down?

    On the other hand, I hate those lyrics sites so much, I wish they would find a way to shut them down. They contain ads, popups, sometimes malicious content, and on top of that they often have mistakes in the lyrics.

    So, I'm not sure I care that much about this one, personally.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:I can't decide (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:43AM (#15730608)
      I would love if the RIAA or whoever just set up one site, possibly with a few google text ads, or maybe a few simple banners, and offered the real official lyrics to all the songs in existence. Really, it wouldn't be that hard, and it would help people find music they had heard so they could buy it. It would be a nice change from all those crappy lyrics sites with popups, viruses, and other crap that you find while searching for something as simple as lyrics. I think that the music industry could make quite a bit of money just from the ads. Not to mention the added sales from people being able to find songs. Apple, Amazon and other sites who sell music could also pay a fee to work the results into their services, so that not only could people find song by band and song title, but also by the lyrics. I'm sure the customers would love it.

      • Re:I can't decide (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Jesus_666 ( 702802 )
        That's exactly what they want. Of course, you'll have to pay a monthly fee; we can't allow something like convenience now, right?
      • Not to pick on you, but why would the RIAA need Google text ads?

        The RIAA represents a stack of multi-billion dollar corporations that actively setup their own advertising arrangements, websites & promotions.

        Google Ads are not the solution to everything.

        • Re:I can't decide (Score:3, Interesting)

          by CastrTroy ( 595695 )
          They don't have to use google ads, but it would be nice if they stuck to nice clean text based ads in the spirit of google. That or simple banners like you see around slashdot. It would be a nice change from most of the other lyrics sites out there.
  • Have "singers" mumble out incoherant words during "performances" then charge fans for the lyrics, so that they can see if said lyrics are "deep." Either that, or they can sue the fuck out of people.

    I suppose either is a "good" current business model for the RIAA. I wonder when they're simply going to try to make music people want to hear again?
    • Have "singers" mumble out incoherant words during "performances" then charge fans for the lyrics, so that they can see if said lyrics are "deep."

      Already been done, see Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Sean Paul ("Fight me Lennon?") The guys who sing "Louie Louie" etc.

      But maybe they are doing this to save themseleves from law suits. Remember how long Jeremy from Pearl Jam played on the radio and VH1 and Mtv before they realized Eddie Veder was saying "Harmless little Fuck" If there were no lyric sites then no one woul

  • DRM? (Score:3, Funny)

    by shish ( 588640 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:24AM (#15730515) Homepage
    Will these official lyrics come in encrypted, DRM'ed text files, and you aren't allowed to sing along once your licence runs out? :P

    • Re:DRM? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by zoeblade ( 600058 )

      Will these official lyrics come in encrypted, DRM'ed text files

      That's a pretty good question, actually. From what I understand, the FairPlay DRM used in the iTunes Music Store (to use a popular example) only encrypts the AAC audio stream of the M4A wrapper file. Seeing as this wrapper also includes the album cover art and (as far as I know) the lyric to the song in question, and I'm pretty sure FairPlay doesn't encrypt either of these, it should be trivially easy to extract the copyrighted artwork and l

    • Doesn't matter, there's still that damned analog hole! Take a screenshot, print screenshot, scan print, and OCR the scan to a standard text file. Or just retype them. Wait, that's a digital hole! Oh noes, more bullshit will soon be delivered to your doorstep for the cost of your taxes, courtesy a baited congress. Yep, they're going to ban typing. And of course speech recognition as well, people with CTS and disabilities be damned. I suppose USB3.0 will end up having its own sort of HDCP: KRAP (Keystr

    • Funny you should ask that. I can't remember whether it was lyrics.ch or another popular lyrics site, but when the record companies shut them down, they nicked their domain name, and set up an "equivalent" service. What this actually was was a Java applet that would connect to the server, download encrypted lyrics, display a couple of lines at a time and scroll slowly. You couldn't even scroll back up or copy & paste.

      I think they must have had some sort of agreement to keep the service running in

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:25AM (#15730521)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Good grief. The RIAA goes to all the trouble and expense to provide us with the highest grade litiginous doublethought, paving the way for their ownership of our very memories themselves, and you apply LOGIC? You should be whipped as an ungreatful clod, I tell ya!
    • How many times have you typed a snippet of lyrics into Google hoping to find the name of a song so you can either buy the track or check out what other material they offer? I've done it plenty of times and once I find the name of the song and the band I head over to iTunes and buy the song and sometimes the whole album, if it's good enough. Without lyrics sites or pay only lyrics I honestly don't know how you'd find the name of a song that easily.

      Another example of the RIAA or whatever entity acting penny w
  • I went to a series of concerts in York (UK) last week as part of the York Early Music Festival [ncem.co.uk]. Will they be looking to enforce copyright on the pieces that Micrologus [micrologus.it] did from 15th century Italy?
  • ... since I know the lyrics for more than 200 songs and counting, and I'm not afraid (so far) to spell them out in public, while working in the garden or in the backyard.

    Now, I might consider buying a bulletproof jacket, just in case the RIAA sends a couple of goons down my street...

    (and before anyone asks, no, I've never had any neighbor complaining about my singing :-)

  • Ridiculous. Lyrics are supposed to be free, and printed on the album liner, just like always...oh, wait, there's no room anymore on the teeny-tiny CD insert. Well, there is if they choose to spend a few extra cents and make it a booklet. The point is, NOBODY is infringing anything by trying to find and understand the lyrics to a song on a CD they have bought, or even a song they heard on the radio and are contemplating buying.

  • this.foot.shoot(); (Score:5, Insightful)

    by isomeme ( 177414 ) <cdberry@gmail.com> on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:38AM (#15730588) Journal
    The most common way I discover new music is hearing it being played -- in a cafe or store, typically -- deciding I like the sound, and remembering a unique-sounding snippet of lyrics to Google later. That gives me the title and artist. From there I can buy the track on Rhapsody, or even buy the CD.

    If they shut down the lyrics sites, I will buy much less music. Nice work there, RIAA.
  • I can see the commercial:
    "Did you like Bob's latest song? Did you understand a single word he said? Well now you can understand them all! Call 1-800-LYR-IC4U, operators are standing by."
  • In one shot.

    What the fucking hellhole of a crap is this ?

    This galaxy was not created to 'accommodate music industry personas and enrichment and well being of them above all others' ?

    To hell with them. Just for these bastards' sake, i am going to go get lyrics from places 'illegal', despite i have no business with lyrics and do not care for them.

    Motherfucking load of crap. You u.s. people, are just a crowd to be herded it seems. These rich son of a bitches do WHATEVER they want with you, and thro
  • If you put up a completely blank web page, then you have just published the lyrics to every instrumental ever recorded.

    That would be like, 50,000+ violations per page.

    Don't say I didn't warn you when they knock on your door.

  • For shame! Suggesting that record company executives are greedy just because they want to license the lyrics to songs? They're just trying to make an honest buck. After all, they've got wives and children and mistresses and butlers and horses and maids and gardeners to feed just like everyone else.
    • I know you're joking.. I just wanted to say your post reminded me of the old European surfdoms where nobles would 'own' 2-300 surfs and everything the surfs did was designed to increase the wealth of the nobleman, and the best the surfs could ever hope for was to work INSIDE the house instead of outside in the fields.

      This is the same way most executives look at consumers nowadays: the purpose of our existence is to BUY THEIR STUFF and MAKE THEM RICH - and the best we can ever hope for is a comfortable 401k
  • Revenues won't increase if they manage to pull this off... There is a finite amount of money people are able to afford to spend on entertainment over any given period of time. The only way they get an increase out of this is if people decide some other entertainment purchase is less worthy than buying lyrics access, and change their buying habits. I think the only likely candidate for the corresponding sales drop is CDs. If people have to buy the lyrics they want, they'll either not buy them, buy less CDs s
    • It's all so ludicrous. I can't believe that these buffoons don't get laughed out of the boardroom when they try to invent ways they are "losing" money.

      We keep these asshats in fancy cars and hookers, and they don't want me to be able to go to a website to see if I heard a lyric right or not?

      I think I should start saying that I'm losing over a billion dollars a year because each U.S. adult isn't sending me a $5 bill on my birthday. That's the same thing to me as a record company whining about lost revenue
  • What if I reverse engineer the lyrics of my favorite songs and post them on a site for all?

  • Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah

    There; I guess its ok, because its satire.

    Ratboy

    And now for something completely different: the Public Domain! Dum dum dum duuuum, Dum dum dum Duuuum.

  • I reserve judgement until I see the pricing model (Score:3, Interesting)

    by uqbar ( 102695 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @09:58AM (#15731409)
    I doubt they can charge a lot and see it get used a lot. Frankly, an ad driven site that actually provides accurate content without all the malware would be great and might do well for them and for the songwriters (yes these folks will potentially get money, especially the more recent ones since agreements have gotten better for them). Tying it into Gracenote's services would be fine for most consumers, but not me (I'm a FreeDB kinda guy). Trying to charge a monthly fee for this would probably fail and per use micro payments doesn't seem like a winner either.

  • Easy Solution (Score:3, Funny)

    by AnalogDiehard ( 199128 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @10:16AM (#15731542)
    L33t lyrics of Beatles' "Yesterday"

    Y3st3rd4y
    4ll my troubl3s s33m3d so f4r 4w4y
    Now it loo| Oh, I b3li3v3 in y3st3rd4y

    Sudd3nly
    I'm not h4lf th3 m4n I us3d 2 b3
    Th3r3's 4 sh4dow h4nging ov3r m3
    Oh, y3st3rd4y c4m3 sudd3nly

    Why sh3 h4d 2 go I don't know
    sh3 wouldn't s4y.
    I s4id som3thing wrong
    now I long for y3st3rd4y

    Y3st3rd4y
    lov3 w4s such 4n 34sy g4m3 2 pl4y
    Now I n33d 4 pl4c3 2 hid3 4w4y
    Oh, I b3li3v3 in y3st3rd4y

  • Up next (Score:3, Funny)

    by crossmr ( 957846 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @10:46AM (#15731772) Journal
    I tried to post this last night, but alas the system was down for maintenance.

    The music industry also announced their next move was to create a pay to play initiative targetting mp3 players. For too long have people been able to conveniently play our music over and over again. This type of longetivity in the digital format does not allow for breakage of the media from over-use. "We want popular songs to of course generate more income through requiring people to purchase new CDs, Cassettes, 8 tracks or vinyl" said one executive. To that end they've begun lobbying Apple and several other MP3 player vendors to include a counting system that will transmit a record of all songs played and the amount wireless to a network they intend to set up. They say users will get a bill once a month requiring them to pay for the amount of music they listened to. Customers who's accounts are not kept up to date will find their Ipods and other musical devices will cease to function. They've also announced a partnership with a man known only as Borris to help with collection.
  • I use Google to search for songs that I don't know all the time. The unauthorized lyrics sites are a tremendous resource for this. I have purchased many CDs from artists I wouldn't have known otherwise. Somehow, I doubt that a evil-corp like Gracenote will offer a broad enough range of lyrics to make it worthwhile. You can pretty much guarantee that non-ASCAP or BMI songs will not be in their database.
  • I expected when I saw the story summary, and especially the misleading term "music industry" in the headline, that there would be a lot of comments in the thread criticizing the record labels for being so greedy. This is a result of a common and fundamental misconception about copyright and the music industry.

    Record companies typically do not hold the copyright on lyrics to songs. There are two distinct forms of copyright involved here:

    1) Mechanical copyright "(C)" is the right to produce and distribute c

    • Who it DOES hurt are the artists. The right to be compensated for lyric publication is one of the few ways a songwriter can make money off their work without the RIAA taking a bite.

      In theory, I agree with you.

      In practice, that reasoning taken to its logical conclusion means that the whole of artistic creation that is ever copyrighted or licensed in any way becomes inaccessible to the very people it is intended to reach: average joe consumer who just wants something to listen to and sing along with while h

  • In related news: The Musick Industry finds that since their products have been used for thousands of years, they believe The Circle is going unlicensed. The Musick Industry believes that in the distributing of music used over the years, one can always find The Circle and so it is going unlicensed and may start charging extra for its use. The Musick Industries Circle can be traced back to its use in singing around a campfire, the Victrola, reel-to-reel, albums, cassette tapes, compact discs, and on the circu

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