If you’re looking for lyrics, a good yet safe(r) place to reap them is http://www.lyricwiki.org

Do you think placing the lyrics on the site and then referencing it could be an idea or just add the link?

You think a simple application for facebook as the one Steve mentions or has anyone got any other “bolt” on suggestions to add “added value” ?

Cheers

Initially, thank you Steve for taking the time to have a look at the site, and provide such beneficial advice.

It seems like lyrics are the biggest issue, which worries me a bit as I have put so much work into the site, I wouldn’t want to have to take the site down because of legal issues. Essentially this site has been my life for the last couple of months, and I feel very passionately about it.

I have seem similar projects where they state in the legal sections that the lyrics are available on site only for discussion and research purposes, and that the lyrics are only the interpretations of the user who submits them, not necessarily a 100% correct representation, and these sites have been allowed to operate. So I presumed it was ok as long as it was not for profit.

Getting artist names into the database is pretty straightforward, lyrics are a bit more time consuming, was wondering why you suggest an offline web browser for this??

The facebook idea is fantastic, being able to see peoples activity in the newfeed is ideal, as it’s a way of advertising the service to your other facebook friends. We will definitely be pursuing this avenue….

The Clean URL tactic using the 404 is also a fantastic method, as I had actually been trying to do this myself and couldn’t find any easy way to achieve it. I will be implementing this also onto the site.

Finally, me and the co;/founder think Colin Dowlings multimedia idea is great, and would push the project further. Having video, audio, or visual song explanations would give the site that extra punch…and be extremely entertaining as Colin points out,

Anyway…bit of a long post, but as I say I am very passionate about the project and
members of the site are really, really enjoying it so far.

Thanks

You can buy a database of lyrics cheap (100-200$), I would break that into chunks of 50-100 and pay college kids to upload them as users. (c:

Then I would push advertising very hard on adwords, including site targeted ads on http://www.songmeanings.net, perhaps telling people why they should post them on your site instead? Pay them maybe?

I would also invest in the .com if you are serious about making this a long term site… otherwise you are just increasing the value of the .com in the long run.

Lastly, about what Steve said on the 404, you would actually use what is called a mod rewrite if it is on apache. Also you would most likely want to stay away from using a 404, and opt for a 301 redirect I am guessing.

Good luck with the project.

Huh??? Where have you been for the last 10 years? Didn’t you read about a TON of lawsuits that have resulted from people hosting lyrics? One of the most famous ones was lyrics.ch. Here’s what Wikipedia says:

“The International Lyrics Server was a Swiss web site devoted to hosting user-supplied song lyrics. Begun in February of 1997, it was hosting over 100,000 songs and receiving a million page views every day by its close in 1999. On January 14, 1999, Swiss police raided the apartment and the ISP of the International Lyrics Server’s creator Pascal de Vries and seized equipment in pursuit of a criminal copyright violation complaint filed on behalf of eight music publishing companies including Polygram, EMI, and Estefan Enterprises. Now the previous domain name for the site, http://lyrics.ch, redirects to a different online lyrics database.”

Your idea sort of reminds me of a feature in Amarok. It has a sidebar on the left which can display lyrics or the Wikipedia page for an artist. You could trall Wikipedia if you need information relating to artists.