MakeUseOf » lyrics

Shazam Player – A Free Replacement Music App With Lyrics [iOS]

James Bruce — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:01:22 +0000

Shazam – the guys who brought you the awesome app that tells you what music is playing – have launched a new, free player app for iOS designed to replace your regular iPod app. Its greatest feature is the unique lyric display option, but it also comes complete with some playlist building and social functions.

LyricPlay

LyricPlay is a fancy way of displaying lyrics for known songs. The app will scan your library upon first launch, and attempt to match them to lyrics on their server. For those it does find, you’ll be able to activate a landscape mode for karaoke, whereby lyrics will be displayed using various fancy 3D graphics, timed to sync with the music. Here are some screenshots of it in action – bonus points if you can name the songs in the comments (no Googling!)

It’s important to know that this function will NOT work with your ID3 lyric data – the lyrics you have copy-pasted in from various sources will not show. Instead, it uses proprietary lyric and timing information from their own servers, so even if your MP3 has the lyrics attached, the LyricPlay feature will not work with that. There is however a regular “lyric sheet” option that just displays a static page of ID3-embedded lyrics – just not fancy flying graphics and what have you.

For the most part, LyricPlay works well – though I was thoroughly disappointed to find that from my ultimate karaoke album – Bat Of Out Hell II, Meat Loaf – only one song was found to have matching lyrics. If you just want to sing, there’s an option to only show songs with lyric data found – or you can just use the app to play everything regardless of whether it has lyrics or not.

While it was fun for a while, I have to ask myself how many people regularly sing to their phone? Now don’t get me wrong – I have been known to sing to my iMac on numerous occasions – but that has far better sound to drown out my own singing.

Social Features

Should you feel the need, you can tweet or post a status update of what you’re listening to. I think I speak for everyone when I say that this is possibly the most useful feature a music app could ever have (/sarcasm).

YouTube & Tour Dates

From the player view you can jump straight to a YouTube video search of that song, and play them in-app without the usual task switching, which is nice. Finally, there’s the tour dates button which will search for tours of that particular artist or suggest some other similar ones close to you. I feel it’s important at this point to let you know that Meat Loaf is apparently no longer touring, and that makes me very sad.

Buggy?

The first time I used the app it had serious performance issues and eventually just froze – that’s on an iPhone 4, though a restart seemed to fix that. It also doesn’t appear to play nicely with iTunes Match – while clicking on one of the songs and waiting 5 seconds for playback to start as it streamed from the cloud, the app froze – but upon relaunch, the song had vanished. I’m hoping they can fix that.

Playlists

One unique feature is the ability to make good and bad playlists. The good playlist is basically the same as the on the go feature that iPods have (used to have?), while the bad playlist will prevent tracks from playing in shuffle mode. To add tracks to either, just hold your finger on them for a second or two from the player, then choose which to send them to.

To be honest, I don’t really see the use of a playlist for bad songs. Presumably if they’re that bad, you wouldn’t have them on your phone in the first place.

Is It Worth It?

It’s free, and when a song has LyricPlay it is kind of cool. Bugs and performance aside though, I just don’t think the additional “features” are compelling enough to justify me switching from the familiar iPod app. It’s not bad, per se, but it would be nice if the flying lyrics thing worked with existing lyrics, and frankly I can’t forgive them for only having one Meat Loaf song in their library.

What do you think? Love it? Or do you think it’s useless? Let us know in the comments – or perhaps you know of a better alternative?

2 Tools To Load The Lyrics Next To Music Clips On YouTube [Chrome]

Ann Smarty — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 01:30:22 +0000

Do you love watching music clips on YouTube? It has become real fun lately when more and more pop stars and groups have been creating official YouTube channels where you can find their latest music clips. But the fun doesn’t stop there. If you love listening to music, the chances are you love singing as well. While you can find millions of music clips on YouTube that you can watch, very often it’s hard to make out the exact lyrics.

That’s where the browser extensions we review today come in really handy. They allow you to listen to songs on YouTube together with lyrics.

Lyrics for Google Chrome™

Lyrics for Google Chrome™ is a fun Google Chrome extension that loads lyrics for the current song on request. Lyrics are automatically fetched from LyricsWiki™.

When you open a music clip on YouTube, notice the extension icon that appears in the Address Bar (omnibox). Click it to load the lyrics right next to the video and start singing!

If nothing was found in the database, you can do a manual search.

The options page lets you choose whether you want to load lyrics next to the YouTube video or open it in a new tab.

The extension also supports: Last.fm™, Google Music™ and Grooveshark™

Besides, the extension adds lyrics quick search that lets you search for lyrics from the omnibar by typing “lyrics …” + a title, artist or a couple words from the lyrics.

Another great thing is that the extension is actively supported as the developer answers all the comments on the extension page and seems to quickly implement all the suggestions (full support is provided here).

Obviously, it won’t fetch lyrics for any song under the sun, so it won’t always work. Besides, LyricsWikia isn’t licensed to display the full lyrics for some popular songs. However it ran pretty smoothly and found lyrics for most music clips I came across.

Here’s another similar extension that seems to be a little bit more simplistic: Lyrics for YouTube™

Music Video Lyrics for YouTube

Music Video Lyrics for YouTube is another similar extension that seems to have a bit smaller database of lyrics.

It installs an icon in the toolbar that signals when a YouTube page has some lyrics in the database (thus it saves you a few extra clicks as you only click the icon when it claims to have the associated lyrics).

It will also change the icon and load the lyrics even if you have opened the YouTube page in the background tab.

Clicking the icon will fetch the lyrics on the foreground of the page:

Unlike the first extension on our list, this one promotes itself more actively offering you to rate and share it each time it loads the lyrics.

Are there any other fun extensions for Google Chrome to offer that almost Karaoke experience? Please share them in the comments!

Other web-based applications to find lyrics we have previously covered at MakeUseOf:

Image NinjaPhoto

How To Add Lyrics To iTunes Automatically [Mac]

Angela Alcorn — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 21:31:53 +0000

Picture this. You’re wandering around with your iPod on and listening to something awesome, but you can’t work out what the lyrics are. Since looking up the lyrics using your phone and 3G internet would be more effort that it’s worth, you’re left wishing the lyrics were already on your iPod in that convenient “lyrics” ID3 tag. If only you’d bothered to get lyrics for all your tracks in iTunes before!

It’s not like getting lyrics into iTunes is a terribly difficult process. These days, there’s lots of sites with lyrics, plenty of programs that will enter them into iTunes for you and a bunch of handy scripts that can do it too. Just set one going and leave it to do its business. Easy! So, here’s some of the best methods you can use.

Back Up

Before you let any program or script work with iTunes, do a quick backup of your entire library folder (especially the .xml and .itl files). In new versions of iTunes you can go to File > Library > “Back up to Disc” to do this quickly.

Applications To Automatically Add Lyrics To iTunes

If you own a lot of popular music, this option might suit you just fine. Most of these applications cost a little upfront (so I won’t mention their names here) and will also change other ID3 tags for you, such as the titles, artist names, genre tags and cover art. If the thought of your other ID3 tags getting changed makes you cringe, make sure you backup before playing with these tools.

Scripts To Fetch Lyrics For iTunes

This method is free and focuses on just the lyrics ID3 tag. You’ll need to download a couple of scripts (from Dougscripts.com) and a dashboard widget to make it work perfectly.

Download these items:

No Lyrics To Playlist Script – This works out which tracks in your library have no lyrics and turns them into a playlist you can use to add lyrics.
Needle Drop Script – This script will play each track in the playlist for a given number of seconds.
TunesText – This dashboard widget will fetch lyrics for any track playing in iTunes and save them to your file.

Open the DMGs and put your scripts in this folder: [Username]/Library/iTunes/Scripts. If the folder doesn’t exist then you’ll need to create it. Double-click on the TunesText dashboard widget to install it. Once everything is ready, start or re-start your iTunes.

To activate the scripts, look for the menu in iTunes which looks like a scroll. Click on the “No Lyrics Playlist” script first to create your playlist. This might take a while if you have a lot of tracks. If you prefer to search a subset of your tracks for tracks with no lyrics (maybe just your favourites), click on a playlist to use as a subset before running the script.

Start playing a track and check your dashboard to ensure TunesText is running.

When that’s done, run the “Needle Drop” script to choose how many seconds of each track to play. The length of time will depend on your Internet connection, but between 5-10 seconds should suffice. If you pause iTunes at any stage you’ll need to run Needle Drop again or iTunes will go back to playing complete tracks.

Now, this will cruise through your playlist and do its best to get lyrics for your tracks. Don’t forget that if your tracks are too obscure, it’s probably not going to find anything. You might want to stick the computer on mute so you don’t go crazy, too. If you get bored or need to stop the process for some reason, it’s easy to do this again later. Just delete the “No Lyrics” playlist and recreate it with the previous steps. Simple!

Adding iTunes Lyrics Manually

If these options haven’t worked or if you’d prefer to use different lyrics for a few songs, you can always change the lyrics the manual way. Just right-click on the track in iTunes, click on “Get Info” followed by the “Lyrics” tab and edit the information.

Add Other Information To Lyrics

Another neat idea for the lyrics field is to add liner notes. This is especially good for classical music as you can add details of the performance, the history of the work and other relevant information. The iPod will cut off the text at about 24,800 characters, but the information will still be in iTunes.

More iTunes Tips

If you use iTunes as much as we do, these tips might also come in handy:

Which method do you use to get lyrics into iTunes? Let us know in the comments!

CD Art Display- Free Album Cover Art Display App for the Desktop

Saikat Basu — Wed, 26 May 2010 23:30:50 +0000

Every little bit matters for the guy who loves his music. Even the right way an album cover needs to be displayed while listening to a song. You might wonder why an album cover matters so much, especially in the digital music era when everything is MP3 and a player hidden somewhere in the system tray?

Let’s just say that it’s a fragment of memory left behind from the times when the cover art on a LP, cassette (or a CD) mattered in terms of style. A music buff spends painstaking hours correctly tagging his song collection with the right details. Believe me, the JPEG that stands in as the album cover is as much a part of a song as the singer.

If you play your songs… and cover arts are mandatory, a freeware fore free album cover art, like CD Art Display is worth a look. The small desktop application displays the cover art of the currently playing track on the desktop. The free album cover art is displayed either in a small window (that’s a CD jewel case) or in full maximized glory on the desktop.

CD Art Display (ver.2.0.1) is a 1.3MB free download that runs on Windows 7, Vista or XP. The musical front end tool runs with music players like WinAmp, iTunes, Windows Media Player, foobar2000, MediaMonkey, Quintessential Media Player, and a few more. Choose the player of choice from Options.

CD Art Display is not just a pretty face for your songs. It has a few more tricks hidden behind the virtual jewel case. Let’s play a few songs and look at the wow factor of CD Art Display.

Display a Gallery of Covers

CD Art Display can play a slideshow of covers if your song file is tagged with multiple album covers. You can configure it from Options to play a slideshow of pictures from a folder even if the main player is stopped. Another option lets you save a custom slideshow for later. CD Art Display can be set up to show front covers as well as back covers of albums. The display window can be moved around or pinned at a location.

Skin It!

CD Art Display comes with a skinnable interface and a free gallery of skins that can be separately downloaded.

Use It as a Screensaver

CD Art Display has a screensaver module. Set it to run from Display Properties. Some downloaded skins may not support this feature.

Go Searching for Covers

Use the built-in search feature to search for album art from Amazon, Discogs, and Google. You can also set it up to download covers automatically from these sites. For iTunes, CD Art Display can embed the covers into the song file using iTunes API. The search is not perfect as rarer albums hardly yield results. In those cases, it’s better to go manual.

Music and Lyrics

Moreover, CD Art Display comes with a lyrics editor that can search and store song lyrics in text files. Lyrics can be displayed on the desktop in a transparent window as the song plays or in a window in the maximized view. The Lyrics settings also depend on the skin on show.

Lyrics can be setup to be downloaded automatically and displayed. Or you can use the Lyrics Editor window to do it manually. Manual search is better because it prevents errors like wrong lyrics. A single checkmark ensures that the lyric text is stripped off any spaces before being saved (auto-clean).

Lyrics are downloaded from LyrDB.com, which is a large database of song lyrics.

Some utilities like one-click song rating, several hot-keys, drag-and-drop support; all packaged in a small and sleek interface hike up the appeal of this freeware. Here’s a look at how it all comes together on a desktop:

The above view is with the default skin and in a maximized window.

Cover art is quite prominently displayed in some of today’s music players, for instance iTunes. CD Art Display throws in a few more features around album cover art. If you have an ear for music, you might like to eye CD Art Display too.

4 Add Ons That Can Make Songbird Worth Your While

Simon Slangen — Sun, 02 May 2010 17:31:38 +0000

Back when Songbird – a music player based on Mozilla’s code – initially launched, I was immediately intrigued by the idea. A completely customizable music player. The audio equivalent of Firefox.

Sadly, the critiques were largely true. Songbird was riddled with bugs and sure didn’t mind crashing once in a while.

Since then, Songbird has come a long way. Further than most iTunes fans care to admit. Not only is the little birdie far more stable – about as stable as an application gets – the Songbird addons have greatly matured as well.

Back in 2008, Laurence reviewed Eight Great Songbird Extensions Worth A Test Drive. There are some interesting mentions so check it out, but they’re largely still gimmicks. Yeah, just like a big part of iPhone applications.

The Songbird addons discussed below are serious. They can add a lot of extra value to your Songbird experience. With a bit of luck, it might just be enough to convert you to a new music player.

mashTape

Before the internet, being interested in something was a rather disappointing experience. Now, with the Google-Wikipedia combo, you can get extra information on pretty much everything.

MashTape takes this quest for knowledge – also dubbed, ‘being interested’ – to your music player and fills in the impersonal blanks between that bulk of artist names.

In a number of tabs, appearing at the bottom of your screen (see the very first screenshot), mashTape fetches additional data on the ‘now playing’ song. In Artist Info, you can read more about the group, with snippets pulled from Last.fm, MusicBrainz, Freebase, or Wikipedia.

Additionally, the News tab gives you an RSS-like experience, with the latest news items from a number of sources, including Google News, Hype Machine, and MTV Music News.

Finally you have the Photos and Videos tabs. These will show pictures and videos from the current artist, from YouTube, Flickr and SmugMug.

LyricMaster

LyricMaster isn’t a Songbird addon you’ll use every single day (or actually, you might), but it can prove invaluable at happy or heavily populated moments. Although a lot of music players allow you to add lyrics to a song, Songbird’s LyricMaster pulls them in automatically and displays them in the sidebar.

The sidebar will automatically adjust itself to your theme (as seen above), and can be collapsed when you don’t need it. For the diehards, or those regularly offline, LyricMaster also allows you to save the lyrics of a particular, or even all songs, to your hard disk.

Last.fm

Last.fm, in case you’ve been living under a digital rock, is a music website that can learn your tastes. From there on, you can either play music that’s recommended to you, or that’s similar to an artist, album, or tag of your choice. It’s not as accurate as just using your own music, but it makes for some great new music recommendations. And there’s seamless integration with Songbird.

The experience with Songbird’s Last.fm add-on is twofold. In terms of scrobbling, the plug-in keeps track of what you’re listening to, and stays in constant communication with Last.fm’s servers. Even tracks listened while offline will be submitted later on.

As you can see above, Last.fm’s radio stations seamlessly play in Songbird. Even the album art keeps up. But probably best of all, you can rate, hate, or tag songs that are playing. And not just the radio stations, but your library music as well.

7digital

A lot of people use iTunes because of the music store integration. Guess what. Songbird now features 7digital integration. 7digital is one of the most popular online music stores. Their prices are considerably lower, and on par with the iTunes music store. Perhaps best of all, you don’t need a credit card to access it.

The 7digital Songbird add-on allows you to log into the 7digital store from your music player. From there on, you can purchase or download previously purchased songs to your computer. Song downloads are immediately added to your music Library. If you’ve been using Songbird long enough, the 7digital add-on also features music recommendations, by scrobbling your music Last.fm-style.

What do you personally think of Songbird? Do you know any other noteworthy extensions? Let’s take a look in the comments section below!

3 Best Websites to Find the Meaning of a Song

John McClain — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:30:36 +0000

Everyone has their favorite songs, the music that you could actually listen to endlessly and never ever get tired of. I know, it’s easy sometimes to just let that tune’s catchy beat or rhythm take you away, but when was the last time you just stopped to simply examine the meaning of a song’s lyrics?

Sure, it may cross your mind while listening to the music over and over again, but what exactly was the artist going for? More importantly, how do you interpret the lyrics and what does it all mean to you?

With the Web, it’s easy to find out what some of your favorite songs mean. There are a couple of great websites out there where users can offer their own interpretations of any song’s lyrics.

Truth be told, a lot of songs are ambiguous in nature, so you may not be able to find one definitive meaning of a song, but it’s always interesting to gain perspective on something as interpretational as a song’s lyrics. Also, keep in mind that the people sharing their opinions are probably just as big of fans as you are to the same music, so you’ll be in good company.

Here’s the 3 best websites to find the meaning of a song.

SongMeanings

SongMeanings is not just another site crammed full of only a song’s lyrics (check out The Top 5 Sites to Find Song Lyrics Online for those). The website allows its users to interact with each other and discuss their favorite songs.

With a growing database covering virtually every artist and thousands upon thousands of songs, its community has chalked up over a million comments about what the lyrics of the music they love mean to them.

Just search for an artist of your choice and comb through the listings of songs. Each song page features the full lyrics and hopefully some users have contributed their views about what the song means in the comments. Feel free to join in and share your opinions as well.

Songfacts

Songfacts is a simply laid out website that takes a different approach to it all. Compiled by radio professionals, music enthusiasts, and just plain-old visitors to the site, it’s a database full of song information.

You’ll find everything from fun facts to interesting background stories about your favorite songs, so it’s not necessarily just the song’s meaning, but it may very well help you discover more about it.

Every song page includes the basic information, such as album title, release year, chart positions, the full lyrics, and even the ability to listen to the song via a widget from Grooveshark.

The “Songfacts” are submitted by users and reviewed by the site before being added to the list. There’s also a comments sections for visitors to chime in about the song.

Lyric Interpretations

Lyric Interpretations is another site also worth mentioning. Don’t let its simple design fool you. It’s the content that matters here, and the website is another great place to go to if you’re in search of song meanings.

The site gets straight to the point. Users submit their own interpretations of any song of their choice and they’re published for visitors to read and review.

How do you find the meaning of your favorite songs? Have any of these websites helped you at all? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: thornj

EvilLyrics – A Lyrics Search Tool For Your Music Player

Saikat Basu — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 12:01:33 +0000

Doesn’t it sound like something that has gone over to the other side? But fear not, EvilLyrics is still on our side, happily displaying lyrics for the songs we play on our music players. But in the months that I have used it, I have never been able to fathom why they named a nice and simple looking lyrics tool with such a foreboding name.

EvilLyrics is not the anti-hero; it is in fact a savior for the music lover who wants the text behind a tune instantaneously. EvilLyrics is a song lyrics search engine that automatically displays the lyrics of the song being played on your music player in its window. It is a standalone software but stands alongside some of the popular music players in an adjoining GUI.

This has been a distilled explanation so far. There is a lot more that EvilLyrics can do. So let’s take it from the top.

Get It & Run It

EvilLyrics is an 814KB free download for Windows. Installation is snappy and the only screen to pause and ponder is when you have to choose the media player for EvilLyrics to work with.

EvilLyrics works with Winamp, Windows Media Player ver. 9, Music Match, iTunes etc. The complete list and the setup instructions can be found on the website.

The Interface

Sitting alongside today’s sleek desktop players, EvilLyrics is an ugly duckling. No marks for beauty but full marks for an uncluttered song lyrics search engine. There’s a tool strip on top with easy to understand icons. The long search bar is where the song name for the lyrics search goes. The rest of the software is a large white area for the lyrics (you can change the color in Preferences). There’s also a bottom placed status bar which shows the search status and a few indicator icons.

The Highlights

As it is a standalone app (not a plug-in), you can start it with your media player and EvilLyrics automatically detects the song being currently played and fetches the lyrics. EvilLyrics can also be used like a manual song lyrics search engine ““ type in the track title in the search bar and the lyrics gets displayed. Remember, the way a song is tagged determines the lyrics results. Ideally it should be in the standard format (i.e. Artist ““ Song) and correctly spelt out.
You can also manually correct information in the song query line retrieved automatically by EvilLyrics from the current track. Returned lyrics are saved in the lyrics cache on so when the song is played again, they are displayed instantly without downloading. You can also view them offline.
According to the site, EvilLyrics uses general search engines to pick out lyric sites. It uses filters to analyze the query and retrieve lyrics from these sites. If the result is not what you are looking for, you can click the green next arrow to go to the next result that’s returned by Evil Lyrics. Sometimes in the absence of a database, an error is returned.
You can use the search field for textual search when it happens that you remember the words but not the song.
You can get the lyrics for an entire album using the album database resource Freedb.org. From the website, grab the album ID number and drag and drop it into Evil Lyric’s window. All lyrics are searched and downloaded one after the other.
You can search for chords also instead of lyrics which redirects you to an online resource.

EvilLyrics also helps with Karaoke singing by helping you find and download available karaoke files for songs.

Additional one touch features like translating lyrics to a language of your choice using the website’s online translator, downloading album covers, album profiles and posters from online sources do also help.

You can also optionally install the ELLO plug-in which acts like a lyrics organizer letting you view all your lyrics in one place, edit them, search for Karaoke’s timestamps, and join some lyrics into one single file.

EvilLyrics gathers together a nice bundle of features for those of us for whom words matter as much as the sound. But like all search engines, EvilLyrics is only as good as the query entered by us and the resources queried by it.

Where’s The Evil In EvilLyrics?

The free song lyrics search engine belies its name because there is nothing grossly bad about it. The one complaint could be its vanilla plain interface. That apart, there were few misses in my lyrics hunt but then absolute perfection from a search tool is tough to expect. One thing to look out for is to keep the filters updated as they are often the cause of errors or lack of results.

EvilLyrics (ver. 0.1.9) allows us to get to the lyrics as soon as we hear the song. That’s its calling card. Let us know your sound opinion and if you have any other tool that does a snappy job with music and lyrics.

Find A Song Title Just by Humming The Lyrics

Ryan Dube — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:00:03 +0000

Have you ever found yourself having one of those mind-numbing moments when you’ve fallen in love with a new song that played on the radio a few times, but you can’t remember the title or the lyrics?

Here at MakeUseOf, we’ve focused on a number of websites and tools that you can use to find a song by its lyrics, such as Brad’s article on the top 5 sites to find song lyrics online or David’s article on how to find song titles with just a few lyrics you do know. Today, I’d like to cover a very new solution that’s available for the most common scenerio – when you don’t know the title of the song or any of the lyrics, but you can hum or whistle the song just fine!

Voice Recognition Technology Saves The Day

There are a number of cutting edge computer technologies that have always fascinated me, mostly because they represent areas where computers are finally entering into the realm of artificial intelligence. Two of those include image recognition and voice recognition.

While I’ve not followed the state of the art of each field, I’ve always been under the impression that both areas of computer intelligence have a very long way to go. However, what would you say if I told you that I’ve discovered a computer program, an online application to be exact, that you could sing, hum or whistle a tune to and it could accurately guess the title of the song. Images of science fiction movies, where starship crew members seek the help of the ship’s AI computer system come to mind. Well, it’s no longer science fiction – this technology is now a reality at Modomi.

Midomi itself isn’t exactly a very special or unique website. Just like every other website where you can search for and purchase music online, Midomi lets you research music, bands and more. You can watch music videos, listen to music clips or even join the Midomi fan club for any particular music group. However, the true heart of Midomi becomes apparent (and the site absolutely comes alive) when you start becoming “fans” of particular groups. As you enter fan pages, you’ll become aware of a Facebook-like social network of music lovers. As I was browsing through this site, I noticed something rather unique compared to most other music websites. Midomi once again takes advantage of interactive audio by allowing fans to make and upload their own recordings of the music that they’re fans of.

As a fan, you can listen to any of these uploaded recordings. I joined the Green Day fan club and immediately saw user dude34bja’s recording of When I Come Around at the top as the most listened to recording. I clicked on it and was blown away by her fantastic acoustic rendition of the song. You too can record your own version of any of your favorite songs if you click on the “Studio” menu option at the top of the Midomi page.

Record your songs, and if your good enough you’ll very likely develop your own fan base right within the Midomi online community. Get enough votes and you actually appear as a “Midomi star.” In addition to recording music, the Midomi site is just completely integrated with audio at every turn. You can even upload audio comments at the site instead of typing them.

Now, all of this is very cool – but what about the whole reason we came to the site? That little box at the top of the first page that reads, “Click and Sing or Hum.” Does it really work? I decided to test the accuracy of this online application by humming Losing My Religion, by R.E.M. After clicking the text box, the recording began.

I hummed the first 16 seconds or so of part of the song – no words whatsoever – just straight humming. I was absolutely convinced there was no way that this application would be able to recognize the song without a single line of lyrics. When I was done I clicked on “Click to Stop” and waited for the results. This is what came up.

The top “guess” was a perfect match. Unbelievable. I figured it was a fluke – a completely lucky guess, so decided to try it again with a more difficult tune that wasn’t so modern – I went back and hummed the first 15 seconds of “Over the Rainbow,” sung by Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz. I chose this song because there is absolutely no way I can hum it perfectly in tune. After 15 seconds of forcing the recorder to suffer through my cracking and screeching as I attempted to hum some of the tune, I clicked stop and grinned. No way it’s going to know what that horrid noise was. The following were the results.

I have to say, if anything convinced me – this did. As far as I can tell, you only need to know the general tune of a song – no title and no lyrics required. This amazing little Midomi web app will remind you of the title after just a few seconds of humming. Even better – you can download the app to your iPhone and carry around this little song-title-reminder app with you everywhere. Hard to believe? Visit the site and give it a shot – and let us know in the comments section below whether it blew you away. I know it did for me. Have fun!

How To Conduct a Song Search By The Lyrics You Know

David Pierce — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:01:03 +0000

I have this exact moment all the time: I hear a song. “Ooo, good song!” I say. Then, to remember what the song is so I can look it up later, I try and remember a line or a phrase from the song, which I’ll then use to figure out what song it really is. Then, I immediately forget the line, or forget part of it, or can’t for the life of me remember one of the words in the middle.

Now, there are plenty of ways to do a song search by lyrics. Brad has already shared with you the Top 5 Sites to Find Song Lyrics Online

For the most part, Google does wonders in trying to find songs online. If you type in the lyrics you know, in quotation marks, followed by the word lyrics (something like “mmbop bop bop doowop” lyrics), you’ll usually get what you’re looking for. But, you’ll also get pages loaded with popups, tons of advertisements, and lots and lots of incorrect lyrics.

If you’re looking for an easier, better song search engine, check out LyricRat. LyricRat is a new application attempting to make sure you always find that song you heard and liked.

Let’s start with the coolest feature: LyricRat is on Twitter. You can send any lyrics snippet to @lyricrat, and you’ll get a reply back with the name of the song, as well as a link to more information about it. This, in itself, makes LyricRat a better way to do a song search by lyrics than a Google search ““ when you hear a song you want to know, just send the lyrics in a text message, and the answer will be waiting in your Twitter feed when you get back.

If you’re not a Twitter user, there’s still plenty to like about LyricRat. When it finds the song you’re looking for, you’re taken to a page about the song. There’s a link to preview the song (to make sure it’s actually the song you were looking for), a link to buy the song, and another link to more information about the song or band.

There’s even a list of possible alternatives (just in case the one you want is a cover, or you entered common lyrics, or something like that). They’re all Amazon links, but Amazon’s certainly the best source of information and products for most bands, so it’s a sensible integration.

If you’re not even right about the lyrics, LyricRat can often still figure it out. No idea what Sting’s saying in any song by the Police? Just guess what it sounds like ““ you’re probably wrong, but if you’re hearing the same wrong lyrics as most other people, you’ll be given the right one. I tried a bunch of commonly misheard lyrics, and LyricRat got the song right more than half of the time.

As I said before, Google usually handles these things quite well. If do a song search by lyrics a lot though, as I do, you’ll appreciate a simple, attractive site that’s not totally cluttered with ridiculous popups, malware, and “buy this ringtone!” ads. LyricRat, especially since it plays so nicely with Twitter, is a great way to quickly and easily find that song that will soon be forever stuck in your head.

How do you hunt for your favorite song?

Image Credit: Kevin Lawver

The Top 5 Sites to Find Song Lyrics Online

Brad Owens — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:00:46 +0000

Let me set the scene for you. You’re at a Bon Jovi concert and you’re lucky enough to be in the front row! The band starts up playing “Living On A Prayer” and the arena erupts with excitement. The whole crowd is belting out the lyrics when it comes time for the chorus. All together the crowd goes “WWWOOOOOAAAAHH” then Jon sticks the mic out for the crowd to join in and it happens to be in front of your face. You scream “We’re almost there!” BBUUUZZZZ, Wrong! The crowd dies down, the band stops and you realize that you’ve just killed the concert.

I’ve scanned the internet to save you from ever having to encounter this and found the 5 best sites on the net for song lyrics. I evaluated them for a vast library of Pop, Oldies, Indie and everything in between. The sites need to be easy to navigate, the design should lend itself well to lyric browsing and the search function should be prominent without too many ads getting in your way (let’s face it, they have to make money somehow).

So, here we go, top sites to find song lyrics online – counting down to number one.

#5 – LyricsPlanet.com

Started back in 2000, LyricsPlanet has had some time to collect thousands of lyrics for you. A quick search for Bon Jovi returned 66 songs for a band that had 10 total albums. That means almost every song they’ve produced has been covered.

After a bit more snooping, I noticed that they have the Billboard top songs on the homepage but those songs looked like they were the top songs end of last year. It hasn’t been updated in a few months. LyricsPlanet uses a simple design that makes the search prominent on the front page but that is really the only usable function on the front page. The only other things visible are ads, links to other sites and the un-clickable, and dated BIllboard top songs. Using LyricsPlanet to find older, popular songs works well but for the newer and lesser known lyrics, I’d try any other of the 4 sites below.

#4 – MetroLyrics.com

In a huge leap forward, MetroLyrics stands heads and tails above LyricsPlanet. Upon visiting this site, you are presented with lots of valuable information about the music world. You are shown upcoming hot releases, the real current top hits and a nice and neat search bar.

One nice feature about their search is that you can type just the parts of lyrics that you remember and it will find you that song. (Similar to sites Lyrster and Lyricsfly) Remember that time you were humming a tune and wondered what on earth that was from? MetroLyrics can tell you.

Navigating the site was quite easy but the way the search results were presented threw me off a little. The results are presented with the Artist and Song Title highlighted on different sides of the column and then partial lyrics displayed below which confused me. All in all, I’d say they have a large selection, easy enough navigation, great search capability and some good features, like a handy iTunes plugin and a forum that distinguish it from the rest. It is worth your time to check out.

#3 – LyricsMode.com

Next in my roundup is LyricsMode. This site caught my attention with their simple layout. The search option is clearly visible on top along with the top 100 songs at that time.

The main feature of the homepage is newly added songs. After a few days of watching this list, I can tell you that it is a great way to discover some cool music you never knew about (Besides these ways we shared with you earlier). Other than the usual criteria of having a vast collection of songs, nice layout, a fair amount of ads that bordered on too many here and an easy search function, I found that the sense of a community is more prominent on this site and I liked that.

There’s no better way to find good music than to listen to your friends and this site expands that to all your friends on the internet too. Due to this community, you’ll find that the lyrics on this site are very accurate because everyone has the option to submit a correction.

One feature that set this site apart was the “Meanings” section. Here the community can write their thoughts on what the Artist was trying to get across in writing the song. I read through a few of these and some of them are entertaining, others are just, for lack of a better word, dumb. Either way, I think this site is certainly worth your time.

#2 – LetsSingIt.com

LetsSingIt is where the lines start to blur between music discovery site and lyrics site which works extremely well. They have an extremely powerful search box prominent on the homepage that made it simple to find any song, artist or lyrics you’re looking for. I got creative and decided to look up MC Hammer on this site. Of course, I went for “You Can’t Touch This”.

As you’d expect I was presented with the correct lyrics for the song but LetsSingIt gives you so much more. There is an artist bio, discography, top songs, pictures, fan pages and the feature that really made the site stand out, a YouTube video of the song embedded in the page. These videos are embedded by the users of the site and are all correctable by other users in case one of the links dies. The video feature made it fun to read along with the lyrics while you rock out to you’re old pal, MC Hammer.

I was torn between the top two sites in this roundup. LetsSingIt fell to #2 due to their design. I think they tried to pack too much into their pages and it makes it seem cluttered. The information is great and visible but in the sidebars, you can get lost.

#1 – Lyrics.com

If you’re looking for lyrics online, I say that there’s no better place to go besides Lyrics.com and with a domain name like that, they’d better be good. All of the features from the previous sites are combined into one and then made even better by the folks at Lyrics. You are presented with a clean, impressive design with minimal ads.

There is great information such as new releases, top hits and most popular songs displayed right on the homepage. A powerful search bar resides on the top that allows you to search for lyrics, songs and artists. Results are displayed in a clean, easy to read way. There is a great community built around the music with many people for you to interact with.

Lyrics pages present you with not only the lyrics but also with a video to rock out to as you scream the lyrics at the top of your lungs. One feature that set this site apart was the dedication section. Those of you love birds out there will like this section to share meaningful songs with your special someone.

Out of all the sites I tried out for this round up, Lyrics.com impressed me the most. It is certainly the best place on the internet to find song lyrics.

Do you use a site that has not been mentioned in this article? Do you think above picks for top sites to find song lyrics are completely wrong? Let us hear about it in the comments.

Photo credit: Samira Khan.