I have been grabbing lyrics from the internet automatically for my songs as they play. So far I'm up to something like 5159 songs with lyrics in my iTunes collection.
Is there anyone out there who can explain why when you buy a song to listen to it, you don't necesarilly have the rights to read the lyrics. That's something I've never understood.
In the old days, when we used to buy CDs (or even worse – LPs), if they included the printed lyrics, they always included something to the effect of "lyrics reprinted with permission." Why? If the artist has the rights to perform the song, why do they need to get the rights to show us what the drunken words they were slurring were?
Likewise, since iTunes now has the capability of holding the lyrics in the song file, why doesn't the iTunes music store include lyrics when you download a tune? They include album art, and that seems like a very similar issue to me.
I had to resort to third party applications, and write some code of my own, to go out on the internet and look up the lyrics in order to shove them into the tracks on iTunes. I'm constantly amazed at what the internet knows.
For example, according to The Internet, the lyrics for ABBA's Arrival (from the album of the same name) are "Ahhh, Ahhh, Ahhh". Listen for yourself over to the iTunes.
And that makes me laugh.
…As an aside, let me also say this tune brings back some amazing memories…
