TuneWiki turns song lyrics into subtitles so you can read along while you listen.
Remember Lyrical, the free app that lets you look up lyrics for the currently playing song? TuneWiki does it one better, spooling out lyrics as the song plays. (All that's missing is the bouncing ball.)
If the name sounds familiar, it's because the TuneWiki social music site has been around for a while, and recently unveiled a TuneWiki plug-in for Windows Media Player.
With TuneWiki for iPhone (and iPod Touch), you choose a song from your library (using the TuneWiki interface, not the standard iPod menus), then watch the lyrics scroll past as it plays.
That's assuming, of course, the song has already been "time-synced" by another user. If not, you'll have the option of advancing the lyrics yourself so the app will know the sync points in the future.
TuneWiki also lets you stream music from countless Shoutcast radio stations, and works the same lyric-subtitling magic with most songs.
The app includes a YouTube video search option and supports both Twitter and Facebook: it can automatically update your status to show what song you're playing. It even emulates the TuneWiki site's mapping option to show you who's listening to what in various parts of the world--including yours.
In other words, it's a pretty cool app--or would be, if not for the generally atrocious interface. Browsing your song library is a slow, awkward process, in part because TuneWiki lacks the alphabet-shortcut menu on the right edge of the screen.
Meanwhile, menu options and icons aren't logically designed or organized. Most buttons don't look like buttons; it's too easy to get bounced out of the app by, say, the YouTube or download buttons because you didn't know their functions.
On the other hand, once you learn your way around, it's pretty cool--especially if you like to read lyrics while you're listening to music. The subtitling works pretty well, and it's hard to complain too much about an app that costs nothing to use.
Updated, 8:15 p.m.: I heard back from Kluivers, and without going into details, he was concerned that Apple was taking a long time to approve Lyrics--he submitted it in January, but didn't get it approved until earlier this month. Consequently, the explicit filter was made very protective, to avoid any chance of offending the App Store gatekeepers. Jelle Krins, who co-developed the app, told me of an Easter Egg that lets you turn off the filter: just scroll all the way to the bottom of the "About" screen three times, and a filter on/off button appears. Turn it off, and the app works flawlessly.
When I looked at iPhone song lyrics application LyricsFind last month, I found too many gaps to make it worth paying for. Earlier today, programmer Joris Kluivers pointed me to a much better alternative that he created called Lyrics, which costs $1.99 in the U.S. and has became available in the iPhone App Store last week.
Now that's more like it!
The Lyrics app draws on the excellent LyricWiki.org site, which contains crowd-sourced lyrics for more than 700,000 songs. I love the site: it uses an embedded domain-specific Google search bar, which delivers great results. And if you're pedantic about your favorite bands' lyrics like I am, you can easily change lyrics that you just know are wrong--for example, in "Chip Away," Perry Farrell is obviously saying that he and the angel "both wore dirty faces," not that they "both were dirty faces," so I changed it accordingly. (Some songs, like REM's "It's The End of the World As We Know It," have been locked because so many people have different interpretations. The version up there now checked out perfectly against the audio track in iTunes, so I can't quibble.)
Unfortunately, while the Lyrics iPhone app draws on a great source, it's ruined by a persistent bug: it thinks perfectly innocuous songs like Led Zeppelin's "The Immigrant Song" and Pink Floyd's "Echoes" contain explicit lyrics. Maybe they're erring on the side of caution to avoid getting blacklisted like Trent Reznor recently did, but using it felt like listening to a crazy person muttering about how all the songs on the radio today are filth.
Follow Matt on Twitter.
Article updated 4/1/09 at 1:30 pm PT to correct the name of LyricFind.
All these lyrics can be yours as part of a subscription fee.
(Credit: Slacker Radio)If you've ever seen this Internet-infamous video, nobody need ever remind you of the importance of song lyrics.
Soon, subscribers to Slacker Radio's RadioPlus service will be able to avoid embarrassing lyrical flubs with the help of a new lyrics tab on the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Web. Slacker Radio has partnered with LyricFind to provide the text behind the songs, which RadioPlus subscribers began seeing Tuesday, March 31, 2009, on Slacker.com. The lyrics tabs is expected to appear on the BlackBerry on April 1, and on the iPhone sometime next week.
Licensed lyrics are beginning to set a trend in mobile applications. In addition to Slacker Radio's lyrics play, TuneWiki has released its offering for Android and is working on versions of the music video and lyrics application for the other mobile platforms. The bottom line is: are you willing to pay for a tool that keeps you from making a fool of yourself in front of people you're trying to impress?
Updated 2/11/09 at 6:50 P.M. PT to add more context to the licensing debate and to correct Amnon Sarig's title.
(Credit:
TuneWiki)
Back in October, we took a look at close look at TuneWiki, a media enhancement application for Google Android that scrolls through a song's lyrics as you play a song or YouTube music video. The company announced this week an update to its free Android application that will let you also stream Internet radio on your phone. The update, which will be submitted to the Android Market this Saturday, will give streaming songs TuneWiki's lyrical capabilities, as well as its social networking enhancements. As a moral perk, many of the lyrics will be legally licensed. We'll lay out the program's highs and lows, general availability, and some legal particulars.
We mostly liked TuneWiki when it first came out--certainly the idea of it, and in general the application's performance. It is also the first application of this type that I've seen for mobile phones. (The free-to-try application MiniLyrics has been around for a while on the desktop.) TuneWiki wasn't always as stable as we'd have liked, and syncing wasn't always on-point. We looked forward to the media application's next steps. Lyrics precision and a few stability issues were still present in our preview version of TuneWiki; hopefully the latter will be addressed by the time TuneWiki 1.0 reaches the Android Market.
Streaming Internet radio
Providing Internet lyrics, and legal ones at that, are the two biggest points of interest in this update. First let's tackle the streaming Internet feature. Like Pandora, Last.FM, and Slacker Radio, TuneWiki's Internet radio feature (designated by a microphone icon on the application's navigation menu) lets you choose stations by genre and popularity, and save favorite stations. In addition, TuneWiki can display a music map showing you where else the song is playing at that moment, and can stream lyrics that users have uploaded into TuneWiki's database from its Web site--the 'wiki' element of TuneWiki's service.
TuneWiki's streaming lyrics component only works for some stations, and then the lyrics are only as good as the user-generated database itself. If you're lucky enough to get a station compatible with TuneWiki's lyrics software, making them sync with the streaming song is your next challenge.
TuneWiki tasks you with finding your place and then tapping on it, after which the software takes over and highlights the lines for you. This TuneWiki did, but on a song with a quick tempo, the feature didn't kick in until two more lines had played. This is by far the application's biggest drawback. In addition, artist credits were only present on stations that could stream TuneWiki's lyrics. For many stations, we were left in the dark.
Of legalities and lyrics
In addition to streaming Internet radio, TuneWiki is announcing a partnership with a major music publishers association that grants TuneWiki the rights to stream lyrics for almost 2 million songs. Music law is complicated stuff, but as TuneWiki's President, Amnon Sarig, explains it, the licenses let TuneWiki legitimately give the green light to many user-submitted lyrics. Those that fall outside the licensing scope are protected under the 'safe harbor' provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Wikipedia). TuneWiki isn't breaking any laws--for now--by streaming any unlicensed lyrics its users upload, unless the rights-owner asks for a take-down. (Sarig told CNET in an interview that his company complies with publishers' requests to block song lyrics.) This is interesting stuff, especially in light of Warner Music Group's lawsuit against Seeqpod for its role in corralling copyrighted MP3s for users to play. Perhaps TuneWiki's show of good faith and latest licensing gains will shield it from similar lawsuits.
Availability
TuneWiki plans to submit the free version 1.0 of its lyrics application to Google's Android Market. By March or April, the company expects to release TuneWiki for BlackBerry, J2ME, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. These versions are currently being tested in a closed beta program. It is also possible to download TuneWiki onto jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches, though there is currently no listing in the iTunes App Store.
Given that TuneWiki was one of the 10 top winners in Google's Android Challenge, it's no surprise we're taken by its originality and ambition.
The free music application for Google Android not only plays your media, but it also helps build your library with songs and YouTube music videos. An additional search for streaming lyrics attempts to get you singing the right words at the right time.
TuneWiki doesn't ace everything it sets out to do, but if you're willing to give it some leeway, you won't be disappointed. Check out the First Look video here for more details and an up-close view of TuneWiki in action.
Related:
Ringdroid: Awesome Android ringtone-maker
Gmote for Android gets Mac and PC music going
Full Google Android coverage
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