Filed under: iPod Family, Software, iPhone
Hands on with Lyrics+
I love singing along to my iPod. Not well, mind you, but loudly with lots of enthusiasm. I assure you my children love this exactly as much as you'd expect. So I was excited to test out Lyrics+ from SchroederDev. Lyrics+ helps find and display lyrics on your iPhone or iPod.
Although there are many Mac-based solutions that add lyrics to your iTunes library, Lyrics+ provides a simpler to use solution. You launch the app, choose "now playing song..." and *boom* the lyrics are right there for you. Or mostly there. Because there are significant breaks in their library of lyric coverage. For example, lyrics for the London Revival of Roger and Hammerstein's Oklahoma (yes, starring Wolverine) were completely MIA, as were those for the Drowsy Chaperone. Billy Joel's Ain't No Crime was also a no-show but Matt Wertz and Dixie Chicks lyrics were on offer.
Lyrics+ depends on several lyrics databases including LyricWiki.org. But for a $1.99 app (currently on sale for half price), were you expecting Gracenote Lyric Service? That kind of data base access could be offered affordably by major players like AT&T and Apple but for independent developers, Lyrics+ is about as good as you're going to get.
I found the app easy to use and fun, although I wish it would automatically update when the currently playing song changed. (I believe there are callback hooks and notifications in the Music Player frameworks that let you know when this occurs like MPMusicPlayerControllerNowPlayingItemDidChangeNotification.)
The interface is really basic. You can pick a song from your library, search by the currently playing song, and search by artist/song. Stability was just so-so. The application crashed several times during playback but it was easy enough to re-launch, and get back to the lyrics page and pick up with the currently playing song.
In the end, I really do like Lyrics+ despite its relatively limited feature set. Is it worth the two bucks (or one, during the current sale)? I'd say yes. With just a few taps, you can peek at the lyrics of the song that's currently playing and sing along to your heart's content and your children's dispepsia.
Name: Lyrics+ (iTunes link)
Developer: Bruce Schroeder
Platform: iPhone or iPod touch
Price: $1.99 (Sale: $0.99)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Avian said 10:17AM on 7-10-2009
I used an applescript to add lyricwiki lyrics directly into my files, now they just show up in the iPod.app, another app for the same thing is just kludge imo.
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Kev orng said 10:25AM on 7-10-2009
You're one of those iPod singers... grrr! :)
Growing up, i used to hate the song Desperado, or really anything by The Eagles, but especially Desperado, because my only experience with the song was being stuck in the back seat of the car with my sister while she howled along to her Walkman. She'd rewind and replay Desperado over and over. I couldn't hear the music, just her caterwauling.
To this day, if I witness somebody singing along to their iPod, I think of my sister putting all of her heart and soul into wailing "De-e-e-esperadooooo!" for hours on car trips. And my parents loved to take us on car trips. Maybe they were trying to torture me.
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Taylor said 11:00AM on 7-10-2009
What happens if I sing "Welcome to the hoootelll caaaaaalifornia!"?
Luke L said 11:07AM on 7-10-2009
I've had a dashboard widget for ages that downloads and adds the lyrics to all of my songs in iTunes, these then sync to the iPhone and display the lyrics there. Presto, lyrics for 90% of my music and they change along with the track. Just have to press on the coverart twice (first time shows genius etc I think, second time shows lyrics).
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Ryan Trevisol said 11:11AM on 7-10-2009
Matt Wertz, excellent choice! I thought only I listened to him. ;-)
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Erica Sadun said 11:12AM on 7-10-2009
5:19 is a huge fave
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Ole Begemann said 11:33AM on 7-10-2009
Thanks for the review, Erica. Strange that you had problems with Ain't No Crime since the lyrics are available on LyricWiki: http://lyricwiki.org/Billy_Joel:Ain't_No_Crime. Is it possible the song is spelled differently in your music library?
May I pitch Songtext, my own lyrics app here? It just got released last night and (a) has no problems with Ain't No Crime and (b) automatically updates when a new song starts. OTOH, it doesn't offer the possibility to manually select a song from the library (you'd have to go to the iPod app for that). http://songtextapp.com.
Avian and Luke: your method is best, of course, but I suspect most iTunes users haven't done this. Of course, an iPhone lyrics app would be even better if developers had write access to the iPod library. As it is, there's no way to sync lyrics back to iTunes.
(Please delete this comment if it's too close to spam for your taste.)
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Joe said 11:49AM on 7-10-2009
Or you can run Itunes Auto Lyrics against your whole library and next time you sync all the lyrics will transfer to your iphone..oh and it's free.
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Rudy said 1:34PM on 7-10-2009
lyrical is a much better app. it also has a better interface.
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AGS said 2:08PM on 7-10-2009
uhh i know right.. lyrical does all those things and more, and its FREE!!
Karin said 2:10PM on 7-10-2009
Yeah this app seems like a ripoff of lyrical, lyrical came like two weeks before it.
Prateek said 2:46PM on 7-10-2009
Another free solution:
Use GimmeSomeTune (it can fetch lyrics for all played songs in the background and add them to the tags of the file). When you transfer the song over to your iPhone, the lyrics get transfered too.
To View: tap the album art when the song is playing.
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carson said 3:40PM on 7-10-2009
All these apps work mostly fine however, I would pay $5 if it would do this one simple thing. Attach the lyrics directly to the mp3 itself and upon transfer bring it back into my itunes. So far I haven't seen this capability.
C.
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dmdzine.net said 11:02PM on 7-10-2009
Lyrical is a way better app, and there is even a free version available. It's also been around longer. This really looks like a hasty ripoff. And with Lyrical, the UI at least looks like it wasn't done by a two year old on crack :P
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nickcirc said 3:02AM on 7-11-2009
LyricMate is way better then this crap, it automatically displays your songs lyrics and then caches them in the future for offline use, best of all its TOTALLY free not ad supported like the other lyric apps
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awolf said 2:56AM on 7-13-2009
ClickOnRadio.com shows you lyrics from LyricsWiki.com as well. Just use its search feature to find any song you'd like. Not to mention it offers 30 second previews of the songs and accounts to store and organize your favorites. And of of that is free- to Pro version also offers live radio station streaming.
So why would we use Lyrics+ again?
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awolf said 2:59AM on 7-13-2009
To clarify: ClickOnRadio is an iPhone app as well as a web app. Its been on the app store with this lyrics feature for months.
Annoyed User said 1:04PM on 8-04-2009
This app doesn't work anymore! Neither do any of the other ones running off LyricWiki...they shut down the API!
Don't buy it!
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