Chapter 18 – Specifying A Web Page For Lyrics

To display synchronized, styled lyrics in a TuneLing, we need permission from the song’s “publisher” – the legal entity or person who controls the copyright for the composition (lyrics and melody) of the song. (This is not the same copyright as that for the “sound recording”.)

When we don’t have this permission from the publisher, we can still display lyrics in the TuneLing, by embedding a legal, licensed lyric web page in a pane of any playback View.

To do so, we need a link (URL) for the chosen web page.

Select the best lyric page you can find for the song (see below). Then bring up the Overview page for the TuneLing (by clicking its name in the TuneLing Studio), and paste the link into the Web Lyrics URL field, near the bottom, as shown here:

Be sure to click the Save URL button after entering it!

Selecting a Lyrics page:

There are many lyrics web sites, of wildly varying quality. Some are unlicensed (don’t use those!), and almost all have some form of advertising content. Many artists also display lyrics on their own websites, often in a much more pleasant form.

Here are the most important goals in selecting a lyrics page:

• Check the artist’s site first (if any) – if you can find the lyrics you need there, that’s usually the best choice.
• If there’s no artist page, a Google search for “lyrics” along with the artist and song name, will display a list of available sites; you can choose from among these.
• Look for a license notice on the page! Usually, this will be a logo and/or statement (often near the bottom) showing that the page is licensed by Lyrixmatch, or Lyricfind – these are the two biggest legal lyrics licensing companies (there may be others). If you find that notice, the page is legal to use.
• Try to find a page with minimal advertising, and with the lyrics neatly formatted in one section – not broken up into portions. Some sites have video ads on their pages, but these are generally silent, and can be dismissed with one click.
• So far, we have had the most success with azlyrics.com, because their pages are cleanly formatted, and their advertising is less intrusive than most others. This may change at any time, of course!

NOTE: The end user of the TuneLing can change this URL, so if you find a better choice of pages after your TuneLing is published, let us know, so we can update the TuneLing, and notify users of the change.

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