MetroLeap Media and Gracenote on Thursday announced an agreement that enables MetroLeap’s MetroLyrics site to use Gracenote’s catalog of lyrics.
MetroLyrics provides users with access to lyrics for their favorite albums. The site features lyrics to more than 450,000 songs from more than 13,000 artists. Like most “unauthorized” lyric database repositories on the Web, MetroLyrics has, up to now, depended primarily on user submissions to keep its lyrics database up to date.
The Gracenote Lyrics Database contains lyrics for hundreds of thousands of commercial songs, and is the only service that has license agreements with the four major music publishers: EMI, Universal/BMG, Sony/ATV and Warner/Chappell. It also has agreements with dozens of independent music publishers.
The Gracenote Lyrics Database is the lyrics counterpart to Gracenote’s music database—formerly known as CDDB—which provides iTunes users with automated track and artist information when they rip CD audio music to their hard drives.
By licensing Gracenote’s Lyrics Database, MetroLyrics is now able to access more complete and verified lyrics content and does so without running afoul of licensing issues with the original rights holders.