4 ms·

I wish more people would use these, whenever I buy music off of iTunes or Bandcamp it almost never comes with the lyrics embedded. I know Bandcamp supports it b

I wish more people would use these, whenever I buy music off of iTunes or Bandcamp it almost never comes with the lyrics embedded. I know Bandcamp supports it because I recall being delightfully surprised by some music an acquaintance sold there having lyrics; not sure I can recall ever getting them off of iTunes. Every now and then iTunes sells me an album that comes with a PDF of the CD booklet, that’s about the closest it comes.

pathartl 5y ago
Unfortunately, locally stored music is a dead media.
- Teever 5y ago
  It really isn't. There are very active communities of people who collect and distribute media. check out https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/
  - pathartl 5y ago
    I myself have a 135TB home server. I am well aware and invested in local data hoarding. It still doesn't remove the fact that it's getting harder to find certain media. Additionally, most people can't spin up a server... hell most people I know could barely sync their iPod to iTunes. Owning your own media is more expensive in both money and time. That's not a compromise that most people want to deal with.
- egypturnash 5y ago
  shrug It still works for me. And presumably Epic thinks it’s worth something or they wouldn’t have bought Bandcamp just now.
  - indigochill 5y ago
    I'm not fully convinced that Epic believes in locally stored music. Yes, Bandcamp is one of the last bastions of that, but Bandcamp is so laissez-faire I just can't see a megacorp like Epic tolerating DRM-free music sales (or even free hosting of free music, as I've used Bandcamp for) forever. Historically big business is antagonistic towards the DRM-free movement. TBF, Epic hasn't really done anything to antagonize the DRM-free movement (and open-sourcing UE4 was a huge PR win for them), but neither have I seen them really go out of their way to support it the way, say, CD Projekt did with GOG, a store that at least at one time (and maybe still) exclusively sold DRM-free games. I'm more inclined to read the Bandcamp acquisition as Epic's hipper eventual answer to iTunes, given their spat with Apple doesn't seem fully over. But I guess we'll see. I will admit I'm taking the news of the acquisition with more cynicism than is strictly warranted based on the observable facts.
- jhoechtl 5y ago
  What makes you think that? Dead as in record sales, CD sales?
  - pathartl 5y ago
    Records are a different story because they're more of a collector's item. Interesting with CD sales going up, but I assume shortly we're going to start seeing the CD/DVD drive go away. I mean it's already out of most of our desktops, almost all of our laptops, and who honestly has a dedicated CD player these days? Then you have artists like Kanye who are essentially versioning their music. It's happening more often and might render CD's as an incompatible or undesirable media.
- mackrevinack 5y ago
  theres quite a lot of things around these days that make it easier to get a similar experience to online services like spotify. (as long as music discovery isnt your main priority) i use syncthing to sync my library between all my devices. resilio sync with its "selective sync" feature is another option if you have a huge library on one device but only want to sync certain things to a device like a phone that has less storage space. i have a synology network drive that has a music server built in. its also fairly easy these days to get a VPS server up and running and install something like navidrome/funkwhale/airsonic. they all have docker containers as well which can make the whole process a bit quicker. things like tailscale/zerotier let you access the music library on your server from anywhere with an internet connection. beets/musicbrainz make it easier to manage metadata and album art.
  - pathartl 5y ago
    It's certainly still possible, but it's what it's always been, a niche solution for a small demographic.
electroly 5y ago
I assume iTunes must just be using some other mechanism for conveying lyrics. Most new songs in the store do have lyrics; you can see them in the iOS and tvOS Music apps (not sure about desktop since I don't use the desktop app). I just spot checked a couple albums I bought from iTunes recently and every song I checked has lyrics. It even has them timed to the music like karaoke. If I go back a few years, I do see albums with no lyrics. Is this maybe something they've pushed recently?
- iggldiggl 5y ago
  None of the albums I recently bought on iTunes came with lyrics, although none of those albums qualifies as "new" (or even a recentish re-release, I guess), either.
  - electroly 5y ago
    Indeed, my assumption is they have somewhat recently added a lyric requirement for new albums added to the store. That's why I said new songs.
jka 5y ago
Perhaps part of the problem is that these files tended to be distributed in a way that led to fragmentation: someone might add lyrics for their own local music files, but they might not share them back, or they might add them in a way that is unusual or unexpected to other users. Consensus becomes difficult to achieve. Strangely enough, source control foundries seem to have solved a similar problem, to a large extent. They bring together a large number of very different (authorship, content, language, ...) projects within one communal space, and while they provide plenty of agency for project owners to adjust details as they wish, they also allow for forking/editing and tend to lead towards an "eventual consistency". Perhaps a more-open, foundry-like model could work to gather consensus for lyrical annotation (potentially including natural language translations) of music.

pathartl 5y ago

Unfortunately, locally stored music is a dead media.

Teever 5y ago
It really isn't. There are very active communities of people who collect and distribute media. check out https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/
- pathartl 5y ago
  I myself have a 135TB home server. I am well aware and invested in local data hoarding. It still doesn't remove the fact that it's getting harder to find certain media. Additionally, most people can't spin up a server... hell most people I know could barely sync their iPod to iTunes. Owning your own media is more expensive in both money and time. That's not a compromise that most people want to deal with.
egypturnash 5y ago
shrug It still works for me. And presumably Epic thinks it’s worth something or they wouldn’t have bought Bandcamp just now.
- indigochill 5y ago
  I'm not fully convinced that Epic believes in locally stored music. Yes, Bandcamp is one of the last bastions of that, but Bandcamp is so laissez-faire I just can't see a megacorp like Epic tolerating DRM-free music sales (or even free hosting of free music, as I've used Bandcamp for) forever. Historically big business is antagonistic towards the DRM-free movement. TBF, Epic hasn't really done anything to antagonize the DRM-free movement (and open-sourcing UE4 was a huge PR win for them), but neither have I seen them really go out of their way to support it the way, say, CD Projekt did with GOG, a store that at least at one time (and maybe still) exclusively sold DRM-free games. I'm more inclined to read the Bandcamp acquisition as Epic's hipper eventual answer to iTunes, given their spat with Apple doesn't seem fully over. But I guess we'll see. I will admit I'm taking the news of the acquisition with more cynicism than is strictly warranted based on the observable facts.
jhoechtl 5y ago
What makes you think that? Dead as in record sales, CD sales?
- pathartl 5y ago
  Records are a different story because they're more of a collector's item. Interesting with CD sales going up, but I assume shortly we're going to start seeing the CD/DVD drive go away. I mean it's already out of most of our desktops, almost all of our laptops, and who honestly has a dedicated CD player these days? Then you have artists like Kanye who are essentially versioning their music. It's happening more often and might render CD's as an incompatible or undesirable media.
mackrevinack 5y ago
theres quite a lot of things around these days that make it easier to get a similar experience to online services like spotify. (as long as music discovery isnt your main priority) i use syncthing to sync my library between all my devices. resilio sync with its "selective sync" feature is another option if you have a huge library on one device but only want to sync certain things to a device like a phone that has less storage space. i have a synology network drive that has a music server built in. its also fairly easy these days to get a VPS server up and running and install something like navidrome/funkwhale/airsonic. they all have docker containers as well which can make the whole process a bit quicker. things like tailscale/zerotier let you access the music library on your server from anywhere with an internet connection. beets/musicbrainz make it easier to manage metadata and album art.
- pathartl 5y ago
  It's certainly still possible, but it's what it's always been, a niche solution for a small demographic.

electroly 5y ago

I assume iTunes must just be using some other mechanism for conveying lyrics. Most new songs in the store do have lyrics; you can see them in the iOS and tvOS Music apps (not sure about desktop since I don't use the desktop app). I just spot checked a couple albums I bought from iTunes recently and every song I checked has lyrics. It even has them timed to the music like karaoke. If I go back a few years, I do see albums with no lyrics. Is this maybe something they've pushed recently?

iggldiggl 5y ago
None of the albums I recently bought on iTunes came with lyrics, although none of those albums qualifies as "new" (or even a recentish re-release, I guess), either.
- electroly 5y ago
  Indeed, my assumption is they have somewhat recently added a lyric requirement for new albums added to the store. That's why I said new songs.

jka 5y ago

Perhaps part of the problem is that these files tended to be distributed in a way that led to fragmentation: someone might add lyrics for their own local music files, but they might not share them back, or they might add them in a way that is unusual or unexpected to other users. Consensus becomes difficult to achieve. Strangely enough, source control foundries seem to have solved a similar problem, to a large extent. They bring together a large number of very different (authorship, content, language, ...) projects within one communal space, and while they provide plenty of agency for project owners to adjust details as they wish, they also allow for forking/editing and tend to lead towards an "eventual consistency". Perhaps a more-open, foundry-like model could work to gather consensus for lyrical annotation (potentially including natural language translations) of music.