
Show HN: We made a spam-free lyric search engine - songrabbit
http://www.songrabbit.com
======
morsch
Lots of AJAX with no state in the url. Means I can't send my friends to a
search results page (bad) or to a lyrics page (worse).

~~~
azylman
Second this. It also means I can't set up a quick search in Chrome. That's the
only thing preventing me from using this all the time.

~~~
maxciociola
have you tried our Lyrics API developer.musixmatch.com ?

------
blauwbilgorgel
What is your view on copyright?

In 2006 the MPA had a crackdown on tablature and lyrics websites. I am not a
lawyer, but I am pretty sure you can't just publish all lyrics, without
infringing here and there.

What is your view on scraping?

It is unlikely you entered all lyrics yourself, but used an existing database.
I personally wouldn't feel comfortable scraping or fetching my content from a
site that hosts advertisements, and then republish those without
advertisements. Did you find access to an opensource database, or is the
service here more like a reversed Adblock?

------
Major_Grooves
I remember someone once posted about running one of these lyrics sites. I
can't remember if I found it here or elsewhere.

Anyway, their point was that with a lyrics website, someone only wants to go
to the website to find the lyrics. Once they have the lyrics they have no
desire to look at other other lyrics - they arrive and then leave/bounce
immediately. That is why the adverts on these sites are so spammy. They have
to hammer you with adverts in that brief moment you are on the website,
because you are not going to click through and engage with the site anywhere
else. Also, since you probably don't even know what website you are on, you
don't have any "lyric website loyalty", so it doesn't even matter if the ads
are massively spammy.

I guess then the challenge is to make a website that somehow encourages
engagement so the it doesn't have to be so spammy.

~~~
jarek
Interestingly, after a couple dozen lyric searches, I _did_ develop some lyric
website loyalty. I'll still come in via search and leave almost immediately
after, but I'll actively look for the sites in search results. Criteria
include perceived correctness, readability, and not killing my browser
(relative to other sites out there).

I also like Songmeanings' comment/user input area, which usually has sensible
comments I am occasionally interested in reading.

~~~
RegEx
I tend to click sing365.com links in the search results if I see them. They
have a section for user comments which I like to browse. They also manage to
load the page up with ads without bothering me. Their bright red "GET A
RINGTONE!" text ad actually shows me where the lyrics start.

------
biturd
According to the legal, you are not storing the lyrics. If that is the case,
where are you sourcing them from? Can you give a little background on how the
site works, what it runs on and other interesting details?

~~~
robryan
Possibly scraping the lyrics?

~~~
biturd
I was thinking that as well, but if they are not storing the data, that would
mean a real time scrape? Seems a little troublesome. All it would take for the
site they are scraping from to break the entire site is a single character
change probably, then their regex fails.

------
SwellJoe
Add chord charts, and I'll be a regular user. The existing tab/chord sites are
just as bad as the lyrics sites for spamminess and nasty Flash ads (they're
the one site I use regularly that leads me to want to install AdBlock).

~~~
kilian
Sorry for the self-promotion, but you might find <http://guitaryst.com> to
your liking :)

~~~
SwellJoe
I don't have an account at any of the music services, and would have no desire
to play along to songs, so that being the default workflow is not useful to
me, though I guess it might be to some players.

When I try to just use the search function, it can't find chords for most of
the stuff I look for. My first two searches was for chords for these songs:
"Over the Edge" by The Wipers, "Don't Wanna Know if You Are Lonely" by Husker
Du. When it does find something, I can't choose other options (sometimes a
transcription sucks, and you have to check other versions). Also, when it does
find it, it seems to lose it sometimes for no reason that is apparent to
me...I switched back here after it found a version of "Over the Edge" and when
I flipped back here to note that it could be found by going through a few
combinations of band name and "Tabs" vs. "Chords", it was gone.

It just doesn't fit my workflow, at all, and is far more frustrating than the
old method of googling and clicking until I find a decent version. I don't
want to have to guess whether there will be chords or tabs or whether I need
"The" in front of the band name (I'm still not actually sure which change made
"Over The Edge" findable, but it was something)...I just want it to give me
the best option, and the ability to choose if there's more than one option.

So, it looks really nice, but functionally it's simply not usable.

------
txt
Nice clean cut site..I have a few suggestions to separate you guys from the
others...I would make a 'bookmarklet', a few lines of js, that will spawn a
input box asking for artist/track..OR the script can manipulate the current
page they are on now, by copying what they have selected, because I know alot
of people including myself, who see part of a lyric from a site, or facebook,
and want to find the rest....Make a nice image, with the script as the url,
and instructions for the user to drag it to there bookmarks toolbar so they
can search even if they aren't at your site..Also, just as buro9 was
saying..... Song Meanings/Interpretations/Understanding... People LOVE this,
and here is a great example of it-> Say 'Harry & Sally' start dating..They
both go to each of there homes after there date... and sally decides to post a
song on her facebook about how she feels at that moment...Now Harry is
wondering if this girl is really diggin him, or looking for a serious
relationship etc..So over at his house, harry logs on facebook and sees that
sally just posted a song just after ther date!!! What's harry going to do???
Look up those lyrics! And he might not completely understand the meaning of
the song so he looks at what others have interpreted the song as...he now sees
that sally doesnt want him to speak, she knows what hes feeling... (no doubt)
lol just kidding but really, crazy example...I know first hand that this goes
on alot..aha but anyway, ill post some more ideas soon!

------
HaloZero
What's wrong with <http://lyrics.wikia.com/Main_Page>?

(I really should have posted this as reply to when you mention there are no
spam free lyric search engines)

~~~
irfn
well.. <http://www.songrabbit.com/> is ad free :)

~~~
skeletonjelly
How do you think this will be sustainable? I remember a good reddit or HN
thread asking why lyric websites seemed to be particularly ad-laden. The
consensus was that due to the nature of the visitors, it was the only viable
revenue stream. Users to these kind of sites really only visit for a short
period and leave after they've found what they came for. Having said that, I
have no suggestion on what would work.

------
mturmon
The idea is great.

The search responses fail to find a lot of pretty standard songs (girls want
to be with the girls fails to return the talking heads song, helicopter fails
to return the xtc song, books about ufos fails to return the husker du song,
...). And september gurls returns the bangles cover ...

~~~
songrabbit
We are expanding the result pool right now

~~~
officemonkey
Also, other languages than english are pretty much non-existant.

The only ones I had any success with was "Ne me quitte pas" and "la vie en
rose." Other Brel and Piaf songs didn't show up. Neither did any Serge
Gainsbourg.

------
buro9
Back in 1997 when I and three others ran a record label called Jeepster, we
had a few great bands on our label: Belle & Sebastian, Salako and Snow Patrol.
(OK, Snow Patrol were less than great then, and perhaps now.)

One of the things I figured I should make was a web site in which fans were
able to communicate with each other, the theory was simply that:

1) If fans kept the interest high between releases they'd be there still when
we came with a new release

2) If someone was looking for a lyric or something they'd heard and we helped
them find it, we might convert a stray passer-by into a fan

So I built something that you'd now call a crowd-sourcing site.

For every track, people could submit:

* Lyrics

* Mis-hearings

* Personal memories the lyrics evoke

* Interpretations/Understanding of the Lyrics

* Tablature for different instruments

All of which were votable so that the best tablature rose to the top, but
others (perhaps harder ones) were still available.

It was highly compelling, you came for the lyrics but stayed for the personal
memories and insight.

As a label we felt it was hugely successful. It definitely paid back in
keeping the interest of fans, increasing that interest and creating new fans.

It worked so well that NME nominated us for best web site in their awards
ceremony in early 2000 because they'd never seen a site in which the content
was mostly created by fans and that the fans loved.

I left the label in 2000 to do other things. The system ticked over for a
while, but the label never replaced me with another technically inclined
person and when they wanted to change the styling of the song system they
broke the PERL script and left it broke before taking it offline. Such a shame
really.

Since then, whenever I look up lyrics, I've wondered why there isn't a
comprehensive crowd-sourcing of all of the information around a song in the
same vein that I did it, but including things like when it's been performed
live or recorded in radio sessions. A real database about a song, what it
means, who's covered it, how to play it, what it means.

The business model would be to sell stuff related to the song, affiliate fees
for MP3 downloads and CD sales, affiliate link for the purchase of the
official tablature books. Keep it simple, and keep adverts off of it. A
wikipedia solely for songs and everything about a song.

The cost per transaction and storage is incredibly low as it's just text. And
you could probably negotiate with publishing companies as right now they don't
even get credit for this stuff let alone increased opportunity to sell what
they have.

The PERL script in 1997 wasn't more than a simple thing that used flat files
as a database for the 200+ tracks we'd released to then. Nowadays, for the
complexity we're talking about, a weekend project in Django would suffice as a
first pass. The hardest thing is just talking to the publishers, but truly,
it's not as hard as some people imagine, there are fewer publishers than there
are record labels.

~~~
revorad
How did you deal with copyright?

~~~
buro9
Labels don't hold copyright on the lyrics or any other part of the lyrics,
tablature. Labels only hold copyright to the original recordings.

We didn't have a relationship with the publishers for our artists, as this is
a separate deal that the artists make with other companies.

All we did was ask the publishing companies involved (i.e. Sony ATV -
<http://www.sonyatv.com/en-uk/> and EMI Music Publishing -
<http://www.emimusicpub.com/> ) whether we could reproduce user-contributed
interpretations of lyrics.

Both of the publishing companies involved said yes, as from their perspective
anything that helped promote the song and would increase the awareness of the
song and therefore the likelihood of the song being used in advertising, film
or other contexts was good for them. They also liked that we didn't reproduce
official tablature as that recommended that product of theirs too.

So, we asked, and everyone said yes.

If you don't ask, your first interaction is probably going to be with their
legal teams who are less inclined to even think yes.

------
omarchowdhury
Most of the traffic to lyric sites originate from long-tail search keywords
(414 million global broad match monthly searches for lyrics). Your site has no
Googlebot crawlable data, barring you from participating in a share of the
long-tail search volume.

~~~
songrabbit
That's okay, for now this just exists as a solution to the problem that no
lyric sites exist which are not aggressively bad. Though, we might contend
that a large amount of traffic comes from the long-tail search because there
is no site worth going to - ie it doesn't matter which lyric site I use, so I
might as well just google it.

~~~
chrischen
<http://lystener.com/> exists.

There must be a reason why these clean lyrics sites aren't more prominent.

~~~
frankdenbow
<http://www.instalyrics.com> exists

As does <http://rapgenius.com> for hip hop

I built my own at <http://new.songvoodoo.com> as well, so other sites do exist

------
hammock
How about moving the logo, search box, and nav to the side when showing lyrics
so that I don't have to scroll so far down below the fold to read what I
searched for?

Snippets would be good too (as Google etc does) to confirm you have the right
song

~~~
songrabbit
We've experimented with a couple different interfaces once the lyrics are
onscreen, but that sounds like it could work.

A couple people have suggested snippets, would you prefer the first lyrics of
the song or somewhere in the middle?

~~~
jc4p
The matching segment to your query +- a few lines?

------
mikecane
Not "Songbunny" because "Songrabbit" quickly read can also be read as "Song
Grabbit." Clever.

------
TeMPOraL
It's great, and I'll definitely be using it!

Please add a GET-param based search, e.g.
<http://songrabbit.com/search?q=sabaton+primo+victoria> (BTW., no results :(),
so that we could add it to browsers as webjumps/quick searches/however it's
called - e.g. so that I could type just: 'l sabaton primo victoria', and the
browser would take me to your site :).

~~~
fatalerrorx3
[http://songrabbit.com/php/search.php?q=radiohead+i%27m+stuck...](http://songrabbit.com/php/search.php?q=radiohead+i%27m+stuck+in+this+bed)

And then it stores the results in a session/cookie of some sort, because you
can then access the lyrics for the results by going to

<http://songrabbit.com/php/retrieve.php?i=0> (specifying the index number 0 as
the offset from the start of the result set)...each result is broken apart by
<++>..kind of an odd way of doing things though

------
songrabbit
Alright, HN, I'm out for the night. Leave a comment here or email
songrabbit@songrabbit.com if you have any more suggestions or complaints.
Godspeed

------
gabebw
2 things:

1) Please show the first few lines of the song under each result

2) Please stack the results like traditional <li>s - the "cloud" effect makes
them very hard to scan.

------
LiveTheDream
I just see a rabbit with headphones, and some low-contrast links to a legal
page and a contact email. Is something broken?

------
utunga
A great idea - I have a real need for this and loathe absolutely loathe the
experience on existing sites. No idea how you turn this into a business
though.

A bigger, happier font and bigger text search box would be easier and nice

I tried searching for 'Que Cera' which the definitive version was that
performed by Doris Day, surely, as evidenced by first results on google,
wikipedia etc.. however your results were hannah montana (twice?) and a bunch
of other folks singing songs not necessarily including the words 'Que Cera' in
not including the 'definitive' version of this song.

One of the _other_ things I hate about the existing lyrics sites is that they
often get it wrong.. for instance for a favorite song of mine transforming the
lyric 'its not a race' to 'it is a race' (which kinda is the whole point of
that song). Reliability would be a reason I'd go back to a site I trust.

~~~
dalke
The song title is "Que Sera Sera".

------
danteembermage
I decided to test you a little bit and search for a lyric from a Janis Joplin
song Another Little Piece of my Heart, "you know you got it when it makes you
feel good" Without quotes this does not produce the song. Maybe increase the
weight in the search results from keywords being located next to each other?

------
serichsen
I find it really irritating that this site requires cookies to be settable for
the display to work.

~~~
songrabbit
The only thing we store is a session variable of your search results - no
personal information.

~~~
serichsen
That is not the point. I do not need a session variable of my search results.
I just need the results, displayed on my screen.

------
mleonhard
When showing results, how about showing a snippet of each song where the
search terms appear, with the terms hilighted?

Also list the name of the song and the artist. For songs that have been
performed by many artists, you could add "Also by AAA, BBB, and CCC."

------
dpetrov
Is there a good reason why the lyrics text is not right-aligned? I understand
symmetry looks better in such a design, but it's much easier to follow along
with a song when you don't have to consciously look for the beginning of the
next line.

------
JoshTriplett
Nice! Sadly, the first lyric I thought to try ("song that doesn't end") didn't
work. :)

The links at the upper right are so faint they almost disappear; a bit more
contrast, please.

How do you plan to deal with the copyright issues that will inevitably get
thrown at you? Your "legal" link says you don't store any copyrighted
material, but I don't see any evidence that you load it from elsewhere, and in
any case that hasn't protected the numerous "link sites" out there. I
personally think you've done something awesome and reasonable here, but you
_will_ get hit by this at some point.

~~~
asmallgrin
did you use quotes? try it without it.

~~~
JoshTriplett
I tried it both ways; without quotes it produces some results, but not the
desired result:
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_Song_That...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_Song_That_Never_Ends)

------
NickNam
I like Dennis (and what he's all about) and the site is very clean! Nice.

------
snikch
But now where will I get ring tones for my motorola V3?

Seriously though, I like it.

------
perlgeek
I like it, just needs some polishing:

* Black text in dark gray boxes is hard to read

* The logo takes up too much vertical screen space

* You should really point to your sources

* Some meta information (song writer, year) would be nice.

* noscript tags are missing

~~~
songrabbit
Thanks for the input, neither of us are designers so we especially appreciate
usability feedback. We'll be getting to work on these, and yes, I agree we
should be pointing to our sources. I'll be committing changes once I get my
network connection back from Irene

------
songrabbit
Standard search techniques work (ex put the query in quotes for exact match).
Also the text under the logo is editable by anyone, so you see the most recent
change.

------
karlzt
fix the typo on <http://www.songrabbit.com/legal.php>

>>an innovative _seach_ interface

~~~
songrabbit
Thanks, good catch

------
fefzero
A few things:

1) I just tried a query (weezer "buddy holly") that had worked a couple of
days ago but didn't now (it didn't work with quotes, either).

2) I miss the back button and, as others have said, the ability to bookmark
anything

3) It would be nice to see the song title on the lyrics page. I know it's
sometimes still in the search box, but I do miss it if I've changed my search
(or if I just searched by artist).

~~~
songrabbit
1 and 2 are fixed. We'll work on 3.

~~~
fefzero
Awesome that you guys are still following along here. I don't see a back
button anywhere, but maybe with 2 you were referring to the ability to copy a
link, which works great.

It seems really speedy tonight. I'm pretty sure part of this is because the
user interface just makes it seem speedy, but maybe it's because it's not at
the top of the front page anymore?

~~~
songrabbit
A back button should pop up when you select one of the search results (above
the actual lyrics). What browser are you using?

And yeah we arent getting hit as hard as we were, so it's probably a bit
quicker than last night

------
artursapek
I searched for "Grizzly Bear Ready" looking for "Ready, Able" and got TechN9ne
songs. Where are you scraping your data from?

------
ericmsimons
I did something similar to this a year or two ago
(<http://www.lyricfuser.com>)

I'm not sure how you guys are scraping the lyrics, but almost all of the large
lyric sites ended up blocking my server's IP. You should do this in Javascript
if possible to avoid getting blocked. Looks great though!

~~~
riffraff
not sure if it fits you but there _are_ options to avoid scraping the lyrics
sites, e.g. <http://musixmatch.com/>

~~~
ericmsimons
Never knew about this - thanks!!

------
ShardPhoenix
I can't figure out how to do anything here. I click the text below the logo
and it disappears, and nothing else happens.

~~~
songrabbit
Try again, we just went down for a few minutes

~~~
ShardPhoenix
I just tried again, it's working for me now.

------
norova
The site is breakable by simply entering '<a href="#"></a>' in the logo text
box. Just a heads up. :)

~~~
norova
Looks like ya fixed it. Cheers!

------
ashcairo
Do you have any plans on including timestamps for the lyrics, so I could know
when in the song the lyric is sung?

------
waterside81
Here's a feature request: show a real-time stream of the searches people are
doing. Reading some of the comments here, I'm intrigued as to what comes to
people's minds when they try this service out. For example, I searched for
"Under the Bridge" by Red Hot Chili Peppers. Why? I have no idea.

------
riffraff
can you compare to <http://instalyrics.com/> ?

~~~
fatalerrorx3
IL is Pretty good site, it's clean, intuitive, and surprisingly functional

------
bitops
Great start - glad someone finally did this. And it's good - I searched for
"meet your downstairs" and the Amy Winehouse song I was looking for came up.

Maybe add a way for users to submit new lyrics? I don't know any of the legal
implications.

------
GeneTraylor
I love what you're trying to do, but how will you monetize this? Will you
pursue amazon based referrals for songs? (I'm guessing it won't add up unless
you have scale) Or will you try to launch a "premium" service?

------
aaronjg
When I go to the site (Firefox & Chrome on Linux), I can't enter any search. I
see the logo, with the text 'Song Rabbit' below, and when I click on the text
it disappears. But I don't see any text input fields.

~~~
songrabbit
Something just went down, working on getting it back up right now. Sorry about
that

------
gravityblast
Hi, I made instalyrics.com using the search API provided by musixmatch.com,
there is also an extension for chrome here <http://insta.ly/.chrome>

------
beaker
I like the publicly editable tagline, it seems like a fun idea. There was
something about sexual relations with bunnies however when I visited the site.
Maybe a keyword filter would help?

~~~
songrabbit
We are working on filtering out malicious code right now, we'll start thinking
about content after that ;)

------
streptomycin
If this was remotely legal, Google would have done it 10 years ago.

~~~
alanh
> If this was remotely legal, Google would have done it 10 years ago.

While legal issues _may_ be _the_ reason Google didn’t do this, it is hardly
possibility. I don’t see value in a comment like this. If you have more
information or insider knowledge, share it.

~~~
streptomycin
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, whoever. It's a massive and lucrative market, yet
the legal challenges are well established. Some sites have been shut down, and
the remaining big sites are outside of US jurisdiction and/or really really
shady.

------
jiipee_2
Minimalism is nice, but take a look how for example Facebook shows a link to
this site. Too minimalist. (This of course does not matter if you don't want
the link to be shared).

------
vjeux
You should put a link to the original source. Even if their website is full of
ads they deserve credit for the lyrics. Also in case of mistakes we have
somewhere to report to.

------
feniger
Plus one on "Less-than three" in legal Colon Right-Parenthesis

------
martinkallstrom
I like the idea of allowing users to personalize the slogan under your rabbit
logo. Was it put there on a whim or is there an elaborate theory behind it?

------
rudle
You should integrate more sites (assuming that's how this works). A query that
I expect to work is "Simeon's Dilemma", which currently returns no results.

~~~
songrabbit
This will be deployed post-hurricane

------
Khroma
Super cool, I enjoy the clean interface. Changing the URL would be nice for
linking. Lyric sites are pretty bad ATM.

How do you plan to get revenue, if there are no ads?

~~~
asmallgrin
we are currently working on a hash based linking system.

~~~
stoph
I would encourage you to consider sending people to a completely new URL
instead of loading the lyrics with Ajax, unless the browser supports the HTML5
History API.

That way, people who use modern browsers get the original user experience, but
those who use legacy browsers have to see a quick refresh. Your site is so
clean already that I doubt most IE users would notice the load time.

As an alternative, support hashes and the history API so most people see the
"clean" URLs.

------
9999
You have the lyrics for lightsabre cocksucking blues. There is no spam. You
will be my first stop for lyrics searches from now on. Thanks.

~~~
songrabbit
glad you like the site. enjoy

------
jcampbell1
Nice work, I typed "pompatous" and the results were spot on. I wish some one
would give your a good domain name... maybe jig.com.

------
feniger
Almost all search results contain the word "lyrics" in them, you can remove
that and enhance the minimalistic view of the webpage

------
songrabbit
Thanks so much for the sugestions! Sorry if I'm not getting to your comment
individually - my internet has been hurricane'd

------
serialpreneur
That feels oddly strange on a lyrics site. To not being bombarded with Google
Ads left, right & center!

Thanks for the clean interface.

------
onlawschool
"the text under the logo is editable by anyone, so you see the most recent
change." -- Did this function cause an error?

~~~
songrabbit
Yup. Should be fixed now

~~~
onlawschool
Thanks! Very cool site. Well done.

------
iamdave
FINALLY!!

Thank you so much for this. Is there a search API?

~~~
songrabbit
Not yet - this was literally built over the last two days. But we could make
one!

~~~
tm65atcolumbia
Awesome. I'd like to be notified. Got a mailing list?

~~~
songrabbit
Just shoot an email to songrabbit@songrabbit.com and we'll let you know once
its up.

------
timcederman
Kudos - I tried something reasonably obscure: Jebediah - Military Strongmen
and it got it.

------
johnx123-up
Nice. I once used LyricsAMP and that was fantastic (right now it's dead)

------
cool-RR
Please put keyboard focus on the search box when entering the website.

------
tszming
I doubt you are completely legal (I am not a lawyer anyway), as the contents
are delivered via your own API:
<http://www.songrabbit.com/php/retrieve.php?i=0>

~~~
songrabbit
That link is dynamic based on your current session, so it may work for you,
but if someone hasn't searched for anything then they wont see anything on
your link.

~~~
w1ntermute
Are the lyrics retrieved using client-side code?

------
onlawschool
It isn't working for me. Tried Safari and Firefox.

~~~
songrabbit
Should be fixed, sorry about that

------
rosariom
what technologies/architecture you guys use behind the scenes to power this
site? pretty damn cool site by the way :)

------
jamesgagan
looks nice and clean, but i'm pretty sure you need to licence lyrics or you
may run into trouble...

------
cool-RR
Please increase the font size.

------
rguzman
higher contrast, bigger fonts

------
rorrr
Don't people use google for this?

~~~
TeMPOraL
And then go to one of many ugly, spammy websites, looking like sh*t and
sometimes with unreliable lyrics. I appreciate an alternative, and I'll be
definitely using it from now on.

