The Dirty World of Song Lyrics Sites
March 12th, 2008, 3 Comments »
If you’ve ever googled song lyrics, then you know what Doc Searls is talking about:
Click on the top results and you’ll find that every one has a pop-up window, plus lots of other advertising jive. Of course, you can block those in your browser; but still, pop-up windows suck. They break the Web’s social contract, which says (among other things) that the publisher should not abuse the reader’s intentions. Nobody goes to a page saying “I want a pop-up window”.
These lyrics pages exist for a good (though bad) reason: most artists don’t publish their own lyrics. People want to see lyrics, however, so the advertising baiters publish the lyrics anyway. Copyright be damned.
Indeed, every third-party lyrics site is a nightmare of pop-ups and blaring banner ads. Doc doesn’t mention the other downside of all these lyric sites–incorrect lyrics and misspellings. I see them all the time. It’s conceivable that, because these sites copy each other, an incorrect lyric could eventually become the canonized version.
Interestingly, Bob Dylan has followed Doc’s advice, and his site owns the top spot for Dylan lyric searches both common and obscure.