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Ask HN: Lyrics website startup?
Over on reddit this weekend there were a few threads about how awful lyrics websites are, and talked about a bunch of their problems.
Naturally, being in this community for so long I see something like this as an opportunity. I started a thread over asking what people would like to see in a new Lyrics site (on reddit). That received minimal attention but I got a bit of feedback:
-No annoying adds (playing sound, irrelevant, covering the text)
-Easy searching that works
-Simple design
-Categorization
-Stop messing with my browser behaviour (selecting, right-clicks)
Now, I have some half-way decent ideas about how to set up the thing, such as letting it be a community run site similar to how sites such as stack-overflow are moderated. I also have some long-goals, such as attempting to get lyrics data direct from labels and link directly to their preferred supplier for that music (however, I don't think this is revolutionary).
The biggest thing in my mind would be a lyrics site that doesn't take hours to load, get out the bloat of junk, and let it be a community run thing with tagging and moderation.
I'm the sort of person who thinks things too far into the future and too broadly on the horizon, so my main concern with this is that I've made my target so large I don't have a project that I can complete in short order with minimal complications.
My key theory is that people will use my site because it will be an open community, and not bloated with junk. I'm planning on something like google ads onto the page as the primary form of monetization.
Have I gone too far, or missed something critical that I should stop and look at, or should I put fist to the keyboard and bang this thing out over the next few weekends?
- noahc 16y agoThis is more marketing related, but I'd find a type of music that has rabid fans and little in way of lyrics online. I'd find their preferred forum and frequent it, and try to build a community tool that they can use to make lyrics for their music make sense. You're going to experience some genre drift and as this occurs more and more people will hopefully use your service.
- 9ec4c12949a4f3 16y agoThis may be myself directly. I listen to a lot of bands that aren't popular in north america but have a solid following internationally with very little lyrics support (some of them have good lyrics support, but aren't proliferated across lyrics websites with accuracy). What do you think of trying to create micro-communities? I'm concerned doing something like that may end up making the website too large to deal with.
- noahc 16y agoMicro-communities are dangerous. Basically what happens is a separation of small differences. So what should be one community with say 20 - 30 bands all in the same genre becomes 20 or 30 communities all on individual brands. What are you goals for the project anyway? Is it to learn, make money, find a wife?
- 9ec4c12949a4f3 16y agoA bit of learning, mostly from the experience in a task like this. Plus something else to put "out there" attached to myself. The money would be nice, but my goals for that are secondary.
- noahc 16y agoOkay, awesome. I think its an awesome project for learning. You'll get community development, coding, marketing, databases, ad words experience. I would be surprised if you make much money off of it. pg warns against the music business, and I think he's right on a lot of things. But I think you should throw it out there and see if you get any traction. Honestly, I have my doubts of this being a real pain point. It's like, wouldn't it be awesome if lyrics sites were better, but I'm going to go to the one that has 100% of the songs I search for.
- madhouse 16y agoProvide an API to get the lyrics, so music players can use the site (you can embed the google ads at the end of the lyrics, or find another way to get something out of it). Most people I know, myself included, use music players that can query various lyrics sites and display the text within the player itself. I'd ignore any new lyrics website if I couldn't make it work with my music player of choice. The easier it is, the better.
- 9ec4c12949a4f3 16y agoNow that's a cool idea. Note: my music player of choice lately is soundcloud.com and youtube videos.
- apu 16y agoBased on PG's comments [1][2], I wouldn't touch lyrics. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1760835 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1760835 [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1761437 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1761437
- 9ec4c12949a4f3 16y agoThis has been in the back of my mind since I first thought it up. Everyone hates how labels are being run, but what if I avoid the ones that are total jerks? For example, KMFDM (a really DIY attitude band) runs their own label, and their personal lyrics website is fairly behind-the-curve in terms of technology.
- noodle 16y agolyrics require a license. you can get that license from one of two places, but it becomes a cost/benefit type of thing. (or you can do it illegally and just wait to get sued) if you don't make enough $ on ads, you won't be able to afford the licenses. people aren't going to pay for a lyrics service.
- 9ec4c12949a4f3 16y agoInteresting. I've just uncovered this. http://www.mredkj.com/other/lyrics-interview.html http://www.mredkj.com/other/lyrics-interview.html It seems if I'm to make any website for this, I will need to do a lot of negotiation with licences, or use things that are out-of-copyright.
- noodle 16y agono, there are two (iirc) sites that you can license lyrics from now legally.